The first nuclear submarine, U.S.S. Nautilus, is launched. April 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings are on TV for five weeks. By the end, Senator McCarthy is publicly disgraced. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 is passed to promote the peaceful uses of nuclear energy through private enterprise and to implement President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Program. Arco, Idaho becomes the first U.S. town to be powered by nuclear energy.
Hungarian revolution is crushed by Soviet tanks.
We will bury you. The Sodium Reactor Experiment in Santa Susana, California generates the first power from a civilian nuclear reactor. The United States sets off first underground nuclear test in a mountain tunnel in the remote desert 100 miles from Las Vegas. Radiation is released when the graphite core of the Windscale Nuclear Reactor in England catches fire. The Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the first spacecraft.