RA-1 Enrico Fermi is a

research reactor Research reactors are nuclear fission-based nuclear reactors that serve primarily as a neutron source. They are also called non-power reactors, in contrast to power reactors that are used for electricity production, heat generation, or marit ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest ...

. It wasd the first nuclear reactor to be built in that country and the first research reactor in the south hemisphere. Construction started April 1957, with first criticality 20 January 1958. It produced the first medical and industrial

radioisotope A radionuclide (radioactive nuclide, radioisotope or radioactive isotope) is a nuclide that has excess nuclear energy, making it unstable. This excess energy can be used in one of three ways: emitted from the nucleus as gamma radiation; transferr ...

s made in Argentina, and was used to train staff for the first two nuclear power stations there. It is a pool type, with

enriched uranium Enriched uranium is a type of uranium in which the percent composition of uranium-235 (written 235U) has been increased through the process of isotope separation. Naturally occurring uranium is composed of three major isotopes: uranium-238 (238U ...

oxide fuel (20% U-235), light water coolant and moderator, and a graphite reflector. It produces 40 kilowatts of thermal energy at full authorised power. It has been modernised on several occasions, and is currently used for research and teaching.

External links

Report of the National Atomic Energy Commission
of Argentina (

CNEA The National Atomic Energy Commission ( es, Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica, CNEA) is the Argentine government agency in charge of nuclear energy research and development. The agency was created on May 31, 1950, with the mission of dev ...

), November 2004, (

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, 2353KB)
El Reactor RA - 1
CNEA web page (in Spanish)
El Reactor RA - 1 - Características
CNEA web page (in Spanish) Nuclear research reactors Light water reactors {{Argentina-stub