1934 Nuclear fission is first experimentally achieved by Enrico Fermi.

1940s Britain's civil programme of nuclear power is developed out of its atomic bomb making during the war.

1951 Electricity is generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor near Idaho in the United States.

1953 The government approves construction of the first reactors at Calder Hall in Cumbria, billed as the dawn of the "new atomic age".