Formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, it was the world’s second artificial nuclear reactor, and the first designed and built for continuous operation. It was built during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. It supplied the Los Alamos Laboratory with its first significant amounts of plutonium, and its first reactor-bred product. The plant was shut down in 1963 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. It has been preserved as a museum of nuclear history, with a collection of more than 2,000 photographs.
About X-10 Graphite Reactor in brief
Formerly known as the Clinton Pile and X-10 Pile, it was the world’s second artificial nuclear reactor, and the first designed and built for continuous operation. It was built during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project. It supplied the Los Alamos Laboratory with its first significant amounts of plutonium, and its first reactor-bred product. The reactor and chemical separation plant provided invaluable experience for engineers, technicians, reactor operators, and safety officials who then moved on to the Hanford site. The plant was shut down in 1963 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. It is located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and was decommissioned in 2013. It has been preserved as a museum of nuclear history, with a collection of more than 2,000 photographs. It also has a museum exhibit of the X-8 Pile at the University of Chicago. The X-9 Pile is at the U.S. National Museum of Nuclear History and Science in Mount Vernon, Iowa, and a museum display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. is also at the Museum of Atomic History and Culture in Mount Washington, Washington, DC, and an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, New York and San Francisco are at the San Francisco Museum of Nature and Science.
The museum is open to the public and is open for guided tours of the facilities and the museum’s collection of nuclear-related memorabilia. For more information on the museum and its collection, visit: http://www.nhm.org/museum/x-10-pile-museum-and-shrine.html. For information on how to get your hands on a copy of this article, or to see more photos, go to: www.naturesmuseum.com/x10pile.html, or call 1-800-273-8255 or go to www.museumofnuclearhistory.org. For the full story, visit the Oak Ridge Museum of Science and Culture’s website: http:/www.oak-ripsnl.org/. For the complete article, visit http: /www.mstnl/news/news-releases/2013/11/10/10-10/X-10.html#storylink=cpy. This article was amended on June 25, 2014, to make clear that the reactor was not the first to be built, but the second to be used to produce plutonium for atomic bombs. The Manhattan Project’s goal was to build reactors to convert uranium to plutonium, along with facilities to chemically separate the plutonium from uranium and to design and build an atomic bomb. The first reactor to be constructed was Chicago Pile-1, which was built in Chicago in 1941. The second reactor was the Clinton reactor, built by DuPont at the Clinton Engineer Works, in Tennessee, in 1943.
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