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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.”
Y. Sentoku, W. Kruer, M. Matsuoka, A. Pukhov
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 278-296
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1149
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the fast ignition scheme, the compressed core is surrounded by a 1-mm-scale coronal plasma. The critical density where the laser deposits energy is still more than 100 m away from the core. The distance is much longer than the laser focus radius or the core size. This situation raises an important question: How can we couple laser energy to the core from such a distance? One of the techniques that has been proposed to overcome this problem is hole boring by the ponderomotive pressure of the incident laser light. In this paper, the physics related to the laser hole boring, including the parametric instabilities, the channel formation, and the hot electron acceleration by ultraintense laser light, are discussed. The maximum density where the laser can propagate by hole boring is obtained as a function of the intensity. This agrees well with experimental observations, and it is confirmed by numerical simulations. The acceleration mechanism of hot electrons in the magnetic channel is also identified. The hot electrons are characterized by the numerical simulations. In summary, the critical issue of energy coupling in this scheme is raised and discussed.