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General Kenneth Nichols and the Manhattan Project
Nichols
The Oak Ridger has published the latest in a series of articles about General Kenneth D. Nichols, the Manhattan Project, and the 1954 Atomic Energy Act. The series has been produced by Nichols’ grandniece Barbara Rogers Scollin and Oak Ridge (Tenn.) city historian David Ray Smith. Gen. Nichols (1907–2000) was the district engineer for the Manhattan Engineer District during the Manhattan Project.
As Smith and Scollin explain, Nichols “had supervision of the research and development connected with, and the design, construction, and operation of, all plants required to produce plutonium-239 and uranium-235, including the construction of the towns of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Richland, Washington. The responsibility of his position was massive as he oversaw a workforce of both military and civilian personnel of approximately 125,000; his Oak Ridge office became the center of the wartime atomic energy’s activities.”
T. Matsuzaki, K. Nagamine, K. Ishida, M. Kato, H. Sugai, M. Tanase, G.H. Eaton
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 993-997
Purification and Chemical Process | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22733
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An in-situ tritium-deuterium gas-purification system has been constructed to produce a high-purity D-T target gas for muon catalyzed fusion experiments at the RIKEN-RAL Muon Facility. At the experiment site, the system enables us to purify the D-T target gas by removing 3He component, to adjust the D/T gas mixing ratio and to measure the hydrogen isotope components. The system is specially designed to handle the D-T gas with a negative pressure, and the maximum tritium inventory of 56 TBq (1500 Ci) is operated. The employed combination of a palladium filter and a cryotrap has demonstrated as an efficient device to purify hydrogen gas with a negative pressure. We have completed a series of muon catalyzed d-t fusion experiments at various tritium concentrations, including an experiment with a non-equilibrium D2-T2 target condition. The muon catalyzed t-t fusion process has also been studied using the tritium gas supplied free of 3He by the system.