History History of liquid fuel reactors The work done by Weinberg and the team at Oak Ridge National Laboratories. MSRE The Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, which ran for 13,172 hours on U-235 and then U-233 until 1969. Hanford The Hanford reactor produced plutonium for World War II just 2.5 years after it was conceived by Eugene Wigner. Nautilus Admiral Hyman Rickover’s full-scale prototype pressurized water reactor was operating 3 years after conception; in 2 more years the Nautilus submarine was underway under nuclear power. Camp Century The American Locomotive Company designed, built, transported, and installed this nuclear power plant under the ice in Greenland in 22 months.