<P> In 1945, the pocketbook The Atomic Age heralded the untapped atomic power in everyday objects and depicted a future where fossil fuels would go unused . One science writer, David Dietz, wrote that instead of filling the gas tank of a car two or three times a week, people will travel for a year on a pellet of atomic energy the size of a vitamin pill . Glenn Seaborg, who chaired the Atomic Energy Commission, wrote "there will be nuclear powered earth - to - moon shuttles, nuclear powered artificial hearts, plutonium heated swimming pools for SCUBA divers, and much more". These optimistic predications remain unfulfilled . </P> <P> The United Kingdom, Canada, and the USSR proceeded over the course of the late 1940s and early 1950s . Electricity was generated for the first time by a nuclear reactor on December 20, 1951, at the EBR - I experimental station near Arco, Idaho, which initially produced about 100 kW . Work was also strongly researched in the US on nuclear marine propulsion, with a test reactor being developed by 1953 (eventually, the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear - powered submarine, would launch in 1955). In 1953, US President Dwight Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations, emphasizing the need to develop "peaceful" uses of nuclear power quickly . This was followed by the 1954 Amendments to the Atomic Energy Act which allowed rapid declassification of US reactor technology and encouraged development by the private sector . </P> <P> On June 27, 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid, and produced around 5 megawatts of electric power . </P> <P> Later in 1954, Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (U.S. AEC, forerunner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the United States Department of Energy) spoke of electricity in the future being "too cheap to meter". Strauss was very likely referring to hydrogen fusion--which was secretly being developed as part of Project Sherwood at the time--but Strauss's statement was interpreted as a promise of very cheap energy from nuclear fission . The U.S. AEC itself had issued far more realistic testimony regarding nuclear fission to the U.S. Congress only months before, projecting that "costs can be brought down...(to)... about the same as the cost of electricity from conventional sources ..." </P>

When did the first nuclear power plant open