What originally caused nuclear energy to be produced?

Question

What originally caused nuclear energy to be produced?

Answer 1

originally....

an atom sucked up a neutron that collided with it.. became to fat and split in two.

Answer 2

Fissionable materials have always been giving off nuclear energy. It is a characteristic of fissionable elements.

But when we discovered that by collecting a lot of fissionable material together we could have fission occurring much sooner, ie nuclear chain reactions, we had a way to produce enormous quantities of energy. With a bit more effort we discovered ways to control the amount of chain reaction we were creating, so we could stretch out the time during which we could have that large amount of energy. That then allowed nuclear fission  to be a  feasible way to power generating plants, even ships and trains. But thus far people have been a bit wary of putting a nuclear reactor into a train.

Answer 3

A fast way to end World War II.  The Atomic bomb.

Answer 4

discovery of mass defect when a new element is formed and equivalent amount of energy from this mass.

E=mc.c

Answer 5

it was an offshoot of the nuclear weapons development programmes in the u.k. , u.s.a and u.s.s.r. in the early 50s.