This story appears in the December 2008 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe Â». Starting a business was the last thing on Sean Hackney's mind when he sat down to write a business plan. Hoping to persuade a soft drink company to hire him, Hackney scripted a plan for taking on his former employer, Red Bull North America Inc.
1 Nuclear energy was first discovered accidentally by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896, when he found that photographic plates stored in the dark near uranium were blackened like X-ray plates, which had been just recently discovered at the time.
The U.S. Navy led the way with ventures in nuclear electricity generation soon after the war. The year 1957 would see the countryâs first commercial generation of nuclear power at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station as part of President Dwight Eisenhowerâs Atoms for Peace program. Operating on the Ohio River under the Duquesne Light Company, Shippingport reliably supplied nuclear energy to the Pittsburgh area for 25 years before being retired in 1982.