70TH


ANNIVERSARY | COVERS OVER THE DECADES


Covers over the decades


A glance at NEi covers over the last seven decades showing the highs and lows of an industry at the heart of power


1956


Calder Hall, the first commercial-scale nuclear power plant, is opened.


1957


A prototype VVER 210 begins construction at Novovoronezh. Shippingport PWR begins operations.


1958


The world’s first nuclear-powered


vessel, USS Nautilus, completes its first journey under the North Pole.


1959


The NS Savannah is launched, the world’s first nuclear powered merchant ship.


1964


The Dragon Reactor, the first helium- cooled reactor, achieves criticality at Winfrith in the UK.


1963 Oyster Creek in New


Jersey is the first nuclear power plant selected for development on purely economic grounds.


1962 Unit 1 of the Indian


Point nuclear power plant begins commercial operation in New York. It is the first commercial


reactor to use thorium fuel. 1965 The Snapshot satellite carrying


the first reactor ever operated in space is launched by NASA.


1968


The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at Oak Ridge in the US became the first reactor to run on uranium 233.


1969


The 6 MW Lucens research reactor in Switzerland


suffers a partial meltdown.


1979


The Three Mile Island incident in Pennsylvania in the


US results in a partial meltdown of unit 2.


1975


Work on the Bushehr nuclear power plant begins in Iran. The first nuclear power plant in the region.


1974


The 250 MWe Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR) pool-type sodium-


cooled reactor started operating at Dounreay.


1970 The Nuclear Non-


Proliferation Treaty enters into force.


1983


Ignalina unit 1 comes online in Lithuania. It is the first RBMK-1500.


1984 Superphenix, the


largest sodium-cooled fast reactor ever made achieves criticality at Creys-Malville in France.


1986 Unit 4 of the


Chornobyl nuclear power plant explodes in the world’s worst ever nuclear accident.


28 | April 2026 | www.neimagazine.com


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