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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. L. Rhodes, G. R. McKee, P. A. Politzer, D. W. Ross
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 2 | October 2005 | Pages 1042-1050
Technical Paper | DIII-D Tokamak - Achieving Reactor Quality Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A1058
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Considerable research at DIII-D has been aimed at detailed comparisons of a variety of experimental fluctuation and turbulence measurements to turbulence simulations and theory. The goals of such comparisons are to improve the understanding of turbulence and transport as well as to test and provide feedback to the theory and simulations. Progress in this area will lead to confidence in the extrapolation of predictions to next-step fusion devices and, potentially, to improved control of transport. This paper summarizes some of the more recent and significant results of comparisons of experiment to theory and simulation that have been performed at DIII-D. These comparisons cover a range of plasma conditions (ohmic, L-mode, and impurity enhanced confinement), physical phenomena [transport, avalanches, zonal flows, and geodesic acoustic modes (GAMs)], and measurements (fluctuation levels, fluctuation spectra, radial correlation lengths, heat transport, and poloidal fluctuation velocity). Results reviewed here include comparisons between experimental turbulent radial correlation lengths and nonlinear turbulence simulations, measurements showing GAM activity (a type of zonal flow) similar to predictions, long-range or avalanche-type behavior with significant heat transport similar to that seen in nonlinear simulations, and reduction of turbulence with an enhancement of confinement during impurity injection similar to theory and simulation.