Stone to Silicon

Energy · 1960

Boiling water reactor

Water boils in the core and drives the turbine directly.

Dresden Unit 1 in Illinois, a 200 MW General Electric BWR, began operating in 1960. The simpler single-loop design became the second most common reactor type, used widely in the US and Japan.

See it in the living treeWikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Nuclear electricity generation Latest: 2.81k TWh (2025) Source: Our World in Data

Share of electricity from low-carbon sources Latest: 42.6 % (2025) Source: Our World in Data