Nikolai Dollezhal

Nikolai Dollezhal was a Russian nuclear engineer who designed the reactor that powered the world's first grid-connected nuclear power plant. His Type AM reactor, originally conceived for marine propulsion, became the core of the Obninsk nuclear power station, commissioned in the Soviet Union in 1954 as the first nuclear plant to supply electricity to a public grid. After founding the NIKIET design institute around 1950, he went on to develop the RBMK graphite-moderated power reactor design and the first fully industrial-scale Soviet nuclear plant, at Beloyarsk, which began operating in 1964, establishing a reactor lineage that most later Soviet nuclear power stations were built on.