Nuclear power plant

The nuclear power plant crystallized in 1954 when three separate inventories finally intersected: half a century of atomic physics discoveries, Victorian-era steam turbine technology, and a decade of weapons-program engineering that had inadvertently solved the hardest problems of controlled fission. By the time Obninsk's 5-megawatt reactor lit its first bulbs, the adjacent possible had been fully stocked.

The foundation emerged between 1895 and 1942: Roentgen's X-rays, the Curies' radioactive elements, and finally Hahn and Strassmann's uranium fission in 1938. Enrico Fermi's Chicago Pile-1 in December 1942 proved a chain reaction could be sustained without detonation. The Manhattan Project then scaled this into plutonium production reactors, creating an encyclopedia of reactor engineering: neutron moderation, coolant systems, radiation shielding.

The second inventory was older: the steam turbine, perfected since the 1880s. The entire back-end of a nuclear plant—turbine hall, condenser, switchyard—was borrowed wholesale from conventional thermal power stations. The reactor needed only to replace the coal furnace.

Geography and timing reveal inevitability. The USSR reached criticality first with Obninsk in 1954. Britain followed with Calder Hall in October 1956. The United States opened Shippingport in December 1957. Three nations, three reactor designs, same four-year window. Generation I reactors were prototypes; Generation II commercialized the technology. Generation III/III+ introduced passive safety after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. The Westinghouse AP1000 requires no operator action for 72 hours during an accident—physics itself provides the response.