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Nuclear Engineering
Mary Frances Lembo
INTRODUCTION, HISTORY, AND SCOPE OF THE DISCIPLINE
On December 2, 1942, the rst successful self-sustaining atomic chain reaction was achieved at the
University of Chicago, thus ushering in the Nuclear Age and the discipline of nuclear engineering.
Rather than being a theoretical endeavor of physicists, “nuclear ssion propelled the subject into
the military arena, leading to the enormous Manhattan Project in the United States that produced
the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs (McKay, 1984, preface)”. The demands of an undertaking
on the scale of the Manhattan Project presented new and unique cha