The Nuclear Power story begins for us during World War II (late 1930’s – mid 1940’s) when both the Allies and the Axis were trying to find the weapon to end the war. Some giants of Physics worked on this new thing called “Atomic Power” including Einstein, Fermi, Szilard, and Allison to name a few. The National laboratories worked in secret to develop a sustained nuclear reaction.
The reaction they developed is called Fission. Fission is the process by which a heavy atom splits into two smaller nuclei. The combined mass of the two daughter products is less than that of the original parent nucleus. This “lost” mass is called the mass defect. Using Einstein’s’ famous energy equation E = mc2, the mass defect is converted into energy. The energy originates from the breaking of the nucleon which releases its binding energy. This same reaction was contained in nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors; one very destructive the other a great source of power.
For More Information on the History of Nuclear Power:
http://nuclearhistory.tripod.com/news.html
http://www.anlw.anl.gov/anlw_history/general_history/gen_hist.html
