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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.”
S. Hamaguchi, T. Okamura, S. Imagawa, T. Obana, N. Yanagi, T. Mito
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 58 | Number 1 | July-August 2010 | Pages 581-585
Chapter 12. Superconducting Magnet System | Special Issue on Large Helical Device (LHD) | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A10845
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The helical coils in the Large Helical Device (LHD) are large-scale superconducting magnets for heliotron plasma experiments. The cooling system of the coils was upgraded in 2006 to improve the cryogenic stability of the coils using subcooled helium as the coolant. In the present study, characteristics of the upgraded cooling system have been investigated and the steady-state operating method in which the subcooled helium of 50 g/s at 3.2 K is supplied stably to the coils has been developed. The supplied helium is subcooled via a heat exchanger in a saturated helium bath. The bath pressure and the temperature are reduced by a series of two centrifugal cold compressors. Based on the measured characteristics of the subcooling system, the optimization of the operating method has been performed using an automatic control of the mass flow rate through the cold compressors by the heater. Consequently, the designed mass flow rate and temperature were obtained and stable long-term operations have been achieved. The improvement of the cryogenic stability was also confirmed and the maximum average current of three blocks of the coils has reached up to 11.833 kA.
