Civil nuclear power plant
Central nuclear civil (Obninsk, Calder Hall, Shippingport)
- Date
- 1954-1957 · confidence high
- Place
- Obninsk, USSR (1954); Calder Hall, United Kingdom (1956); Shippingport, Pennsylvania, United States (1957)
- Credited to
- Institute of Physics and Power Engineering (Obninsk, Igor Kurchatov); UKAEA; Westinghouse and Rickover
- People
- 👤 Hyman Rickover1900–1986
- Field
- Matter & energy
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The first plants to connect a nuclear reactor to the electricity grid. They promised electricity too cheap to meter and opened a decades-long debate over risks and waste.
Obninsk was the first to supply electricity to the grid (5 MW, 1954); Calder Hall was the first at industrial scale (1956), though it also produced military plutonium.
What it led to
- The nuclear programmes of France, Japan and South Korea, and 10 per cent of the world's electricity
- The Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents and the anti-nuclear movement
- The nuclear renaissance as a low-carbon energy source and small modular reactors
Built on
Made possible
- Small modular reactor (SMR) in commercial operation2023
- Onkalo deep geological repository for spent nuclear fuel2004-2025
- pressurised water reactors
- small modular reactors
- fuel reprocessing