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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.”
Susana Reyes, Jeffery F. Latkowski, Javier Sanz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 37 | Number 3 | May 2000 | Pages 225-230
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST00-A136
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactive afterheat is an important source term for the release of radionuclides in fusion systems under accident conditions. Heat transfer calculations are used to determine time-temperature histories in regions of interest, but the true source term needs to be the "effective afterheat," which considers the transport of penetrating gamma rays. Without consideration of photon transport, accident temperatures may be overestimated in some regions while being underestimated in others. The importance of this effect is demonstrated for a simple, one-dimensional problem. The significance of this effect depends strongly on the accident scenario being analyzed.
