THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIRST CHAIN REACTING PILE

Paper by Enrico Fermi

Muhammad Taufiq Murtadho (20160881)
Summary
It was a common fact among physicist and chemist, that huge amount of energy is
stored inside atomic nuclei. At least two ways to release this energy in a large scale were
considered. The first one is to bring two nuclei in contact with each other. However, the
pressure and temperature that are needed to overcome electrical repulsion between two
consecutive nuclei is beyond attainable by technology at that time. The second alternative is
to maintain a chain reaction. Most of nuclear disintegration emit particles. When emitted
particles in average are enough to produce more than one similar reaction, then one could
produce the reaction over and over again creating a chain reaction. The number of reactions
that could occur after one reaction develop is called reproduction factor. In order for chain
reaction to work, reproduction factor must be greater than 1. This was not the case for most
of nuclear reactions known at that time except for fission process.
Fission is a process in which a neutron and uranium atom collides. It is able to
produce more than one neutron for each reaction, therefore would capable of sustaining
chain reaction. Stepping further into the problem, two solutions were proposed to build chain
reaction. One method uses the separation out of uranium rare isotope 235. If not due to its
rarity, this kind of fission would be very promising since it eliminates the parasitic neutron
absorption problem of abundance Uranium 238. Fermi proposed other method making use of
the abundance of Uranium 238. He showed that the ratio of useful absorption and parasitic
absorption in 238 fission depends on the energy of neutrons, and its greater for neutrons
with low energies. He then introduced the idea of arranging Uranium throughout some light
element. When neutron hit an atom of light element, the light element would recoil and gain
energy, consequently lowering the energy of neutron. Hydrogen would be the most effective
element in slowing down the neutron if it doesnt have tendency to absorb the neutron and
form Deuterium. After several discussions, finally carbon in form of graphite was chosen as
the light element in the attempt of building chain reaction. To further reducing the parasitic
absorption of neutron, Fermi and his team arranged Uranium in lumps distributed in some
suitable lattice configuration throughout the graphite. This arrangement makes neutrons
have less probability of encountering uranium in the slowing down process.
Nonetheless, another problem arises. In any system with finite dimension, some
neutrons would escape. It was found out that the number of neutrons escaping from the
graphite is quite considerable, resulting only a small percentage of neutrons capable of
sustaining chain reaction. In principal, this could be solved by increasing the systems size to
critical size, the minimum size that makes chain reaction possible. Indeed, Fermi and his
team discovered that neutron density tends to diverge at critical size. Cadmium is one of the
most powerful neutron absorbers. Thats why they used long cadmium strips to control the
chain reaction to stay at a constant value and not rising or dropping uncontrollably. Finally,
Fermi concluded that the chain reaction with graphite natural uranium is possible, and that it
is very easily controllable.
Critical Opinion
In the beginning of his report, Fermi mentioned that one of the simplest way to
achieve nuclear reactor would be to brought nuclear hydrogen in contacts with each other.
Scientist call this reaction fusion reaction. He admitted that this method was beyond the

limits that could be achieved by ordinary means. Nowadays, people are working on this kind
of reactor. They are trying to develop more and more sophisticated technique to make fusion
reactor works and to ensure its safety. One of the most promising technique is by using
magnetic confinement. That is the appliance of magnetic field to prevents hot hydrogen
plasma to touch construction wall so that it will not melt. Nonetheless, this reactor still
produces less energy than what it actually used. So, there are still a lot of work to be done. If
fusion reactor could be viable in the future, we could get a nature friendly and almost infinite
source of energy, because hydrogen is one of the most abundance element on earth.
On the second page of his report, he used the term parasitic absorption of Uranium
238. Its not really clear what he actually meant by that. The formal scientific term for
phenomena that he was trying to describe is neutron capture. When neutrons interact with a
nucleus, there are three possible outcomes. The first one is elastic scattering; the neutron
collides elastically with the nucleus, nuclear fission; the nucleus breaks up into two
fragments, and neutron capture; the nucleus is transmuted into a different isotope of the
same element and it emits gamma ray. In case of Uranium 238, theres a high possibility
that it could absorb neutron to produce Uranium 239 and gamma ray. We want the
percentage of Uranium inside the reactor that undergo fission to be as large as possible.
Therefore, we need to minimize the effect of neutron capture in the reactor. This is what
Fermi meant by reducing the ratio of parasitic absorption and useful absorption.
Lastly, Fermi concluded his report by saying that the chain reaction with natural
uranium is possible and easily controllable. However, Fermi didnt take into account several
risks of his reactor model. Cadmium rod is used in this model to absorbs neutrons and
control the fission reaction. But this cadmium also can retain heat due to inelastic collision
between the rod and neutrons. Moreover, the products of fission reaction itself produce
radiation which in turn produce a great deal of heat. So, the nuclear reactor would
continually produce heat even in absence of nuclear fission. If theres no cooling mechanism
introduced in this model, the heat will start mounting up and makes the construction melts.
If this happens, a lot of harmful radioactive materials will be released. Actually, this is what
happened in Fukushima nuclear disaster at 2011. So, to control nuclear reactor isnt as easy
as what Fermi pictured in his report. Every possible risks should be taken into consideration.
Reference

Enrico, F. 1945. The development of first chain reacting pile. Proceedings of

the American Philosophical Society. 90(1): 20-24.