Harold Lichtenberger

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The team from the Chicago Pile 1946, Lichtenberger is third from the left in the middle row

Harold V. Lichtenberger (born April 22, 1920 in Decatur , Illinois , † December 7, 1993 in West Simsbury , Hartford (Connecticut) ) was an American physicist who was involved in the construction of the first nuclear reactor ( Chicago Pile ).

Life

Lichtenberger attended Millikin University in Illinois with a bachelor's degree in 1942. During the construction of the first CP-1 reactor, he was part of a suicide mission ( Liquid control squad , with W. Nyer, Alvin C. Graves), the bottles with cadmium solution as Neutron absorber should dump over the reactor in case the control rods failed.

Lichtenberger designed and tested the first heavy water reactor (CP-3) with Albert Wattenberg and carried out a number of other reactor experiments with Walter Zinn at the Argonne National Laboratory , including the first breeder reactor EBR-1 and the boiling water reactor Borax III, the first reactor built in 1955 supplied an entire city (Arco in Indiana with 500 kW) with electricity. He became director of the Idaho Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, where new reactors were tested.

In 1954, under the direction of Lichtenberger, test reactors were systematically supercritical and exploded on the test site in Idaho by manipulating the control rods.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The first reactor, DOE 1982, pdf
  2. ↑ Borax III
  3. ↑ Robert Gerwin, Don't be afraid of atomic reactors, Hobby, January 1956
personal data
SURNAME Lichtenberger, Harold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lichtenberger, Harold V.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Decatur , Illinois
DATE OF DEATH 7th December 1993
Place of death West Simsbury , Hartford, Connecticut