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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
A. Zolfaghari, P. Titus, J. Chrzanowski, A. Salehzadeh, F. Dahlgren
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 658-663
Alternate Concepts & Magnets | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12459
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The new ohmic heating (OH) coil and center stack for the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) upgrade are required to meet cooling and structural requirements for operation at the enhanced 1 Tesla toroidal field and 2 MA plasma current. The OH coil is designed to be cooled in the time between discharges by water flowing in the center of the coil conductor. We performed resistive heating and thermal hydraulic analyses to optimize coolant channel size to keep the coil temperature below 100 C and meet the required 20 minute cooling time. Coupled electromagnetic, thermal and structural FEA analyses were performed to determine if the OH coil meets the requirements of the structural design criteria. Structural response of the OH coil to its self-field and the field from other coils was analyzed. A model was developed to analyze the thermal and electromagnetic interaction of centerstack components such as the OH coil, toroidal field (TF) coil inner legs and the Bellville washer preload mechanism. Torsional loads from the TF interaction with the OH and poloidal fields are transferred through the TF flag extensions via a torque transfer coupling to the rest of the tokamak structure. A 3D FEA analysis was performed to qualify this design. The results of these analyses, which will be presented in this paper, have led to the design of OH coil and centerstack components that meet the requirements of the NSTX-upgrade structural design criteria.