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Fusion Science and Technology
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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. Shimozuma, M. Yokoyama, K. Ida, Y. Takeiri, S. Kubo, S. Murakami, A. Wakasa, H. Idei, Y. Yoshimura, T. Notake, S. Inagaki, N. Tamura, K. Toi, N. Ohyabu, M. Osakabe, K. Ikeda, K. Tsumori, Y. Oka, K. Nagaoka, O. Kaneko, I. Yamada, K. Narihara, Y. Nagayama, S. Muto, K. Tanaka, T. Tokuzawa, S. Morita, M. Goto, M. Yoshinuma, H. Funaba, T. Morisaki, K. Y. Watanabe, J. Miyazawa, T. Mutoh, T. Watari, K. Ohkubo, LHD Experiment Group
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 38-45
Chapter 3. Confinement and Transport | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10791
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Core electron-root confinement (CERC), observed in the Large Helical Device as well as in other helical devices, is an improved electron energy confinement mode. It is characterized by a highly peaked electron temperature profile in the core region and appears when the centrally focused electron cyclotron resonance heating power exceeds a certain threshold value. This threshold value has been clarified to associate with the transition of the radial electric field (Er) from the ion root (small negative value) to the electron root (large positive value greater than a few kV/m), based on the bifurcation nature of Er due to the ambipolarity condition of neoclassical transport fluxes that is specific in nonaxisymmetric configurations. It has been experimentally recognized that a steeper Te gradient is realized with a clear transition (power threshold nature) in target plasmas with counter neutral beam injection (NBI) than ones with codirectional NBI. It has been interpreted, based on the heat pulse propagation experiment, to be related to the rational surface or the island induced by the NBI-driven current. Transport analyses have shown that the incremental thermal diffusivity of electron heat transport becomes lower, and the standard thermal diffusivity decreases with the increase of heating power in CERC plasmas.