Please give me a suitable introduction for nuclear disasters for my project
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Nuclear fission was first observed on December 17th 1938 by the German Scientists OTTO HAHN and FRITZ STRASSMANN at the «Kaiser Willhelm Institut für Chemie» in Berlin-Dalem. After irradiating Uranium atoms with neutrons, the two scientists discovered a new element suddenly present in the residue: Barium. A year later, LISE MEITNER, an Austrian Physicist of Jewish origin, finally published in «Nature» the scientific explanation of what happened: the uranium nucleus broke into two parts, one of atomic mass around 90 and the other of around 140, thereby producing Barium as well as releasing a great quantity of energy. HAHN and STRASSMANN were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1944 for their work. Regrettably, Mrs. MEITNER was all but «forgotten», earning only a mention in the Nobel Prize presentation speech given by Professor ARNE F. WESTGREN.
These findings stimulated optimistic scientists on both sides of the Atlantic to speculate on a new type of weapon and new possibilities to produce (electric) energy based on nuclear fission. More pessimistic ones, however, spoke of nuclear science and nuclear fission as a sort of Pandora’s Box and as a threat to humanity and the environment.
Already in 1942, the first nuclear reactor «Chigaco Pile-1» had been constructed in Chicago by ENRICO FERMI, in cooperation with LEO SZILARD and other scientists. In contrast to the atomic bomb, where all of the energy is released in a fraction of a second, in a reactor, the nuclear chain reaction is under control and can be stopped at any moment. The reaction’s energy is then harnessed and used for electricity generation.