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Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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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.”
Watanabe Osamu (19P39)
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 51 | Number 2 | February 2007 | Pages 322-324
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems for Plasma Confinement | doi.org/10.13182/FST07-A1389
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An electric field distribution of a surface normal wave on a corrugated metal plate used for a surface wave oscillator was calculated. The surface wave oscillator is formed by the corrugated metal plate and a sheet electron beam. The direction of the beam propagation is parallel to the metal plate and perpendicular to the corrugation. In the vicinity of the sinusoidal corrugated metal plate, the electromagnetic wave of the surface normal mode which propagates parallel to the plate exists. From the surface normal mode computation, it was confirmed that an electric field distribution had a periodic component to the traveling direction of the beam. Cherenkov interaction should be excited by the electron beam passing in this periodic electric field region. The surface normal wave always exists only in a slow wave region, and has backward wave with the periodic boundary condition. This interaction becomes absolute instability, because the interaction is on the backward wave of the surface normal mode in the slow wave region. A strong oscillation by the surface normal wave should be generated, because the wave can generate the absolute instability of the Cherenkov interaction.