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The first chain reaction

1942 · na-chicago-pile

Chicago Pile-1 had no radiation shielding and no cooling system, in the middle of a city of three million. Its safety consisted of cadmium rods, a man with an axe beside a rope, and three people holding buckets of cadmium solution on top. The experiment showed that a chain reaction could be controlled — the precondition for both nuclear weapons and nuclear power. The message to Washington was coded: “The Italian navigator has landed in the new world.”

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