ABSTRACT
The discovery of fission in 1938 provided the basis of a new source of energy that was potentially greater than the entire world’s reserves of fossil fuels. The first fission reactor was operated in a converted squash court in Chicago in 1942 by Enrico Fermi, and this was followed by the rapid development of nuclear power plants in the 1960s and 1970s. This slowed down in the 1980s and 1990s, and many of the early plants are now being decommissioned. However, nuclear energy still supplies a significant portion of the power requirements of most of the advanced countries of the world.
