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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.”
Xiaosong Zhou, Shuming Peng, Xinggui Long, Shunzhong Luo
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 3 | October 2011 | Pages 905-909
Tritium Storage | Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12563
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Helium release from titanium tritide films at room temperature have been studied. The evolution of lattice defects in long-aged titanium tritide films is also investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) over a period of about 1600 days (>4 years). And the thermal desorption (TD) has been used to investigate the 3He release from titanium tritide film with 3He/Ti atom ratio from 0.006 to 0.325. Results of XRD, TD and helium release were synthesized. A continuum-scale evolutionary model of helium for aging titanium tritide film is described which accounts for major features of the tritide experiment data. The combined stress-assisted-block loop punching growth for random bubble arrays and an average ligament stress criterion predicts an onset of inter-bubble fracture in good agreement with the He/Ti ratio observed for rapid He release.
