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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.”
Lihua Zhou, Rui Vieira, Soren Harrison, Dan Karnes, Bruce Lipschultz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 64 | Number 2 | August 2013 | Pages 293-297
Divertor and High-Heat-Flux Components | Proceedings of the Twentieth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE-2012) (Part 1), Nashville, Tennessee, August 27-31, 2012 | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-A18092
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To design the Alcator C-Mod outer divertor to operate at 600°C and determine its effect on the surrounding vessel and diagnostics, heat transfer analysis must be performed. This paper describes the analysis and the results of heat transfer simulations of the outer divertor tiles, tile-mounting plate, support structure, and current shunt. Using Comsol, commercial FEA software package, a 3D wedge model that exploits the cyclic symmetry of the divertor, is created. By adjusting the power level of each of the 7 heaters used to elevate and control the divertor temperature, a uniform poloidal temperature distribution is achieved and the power requirements for the heaters are determined. The temperature of each component in the assembly is calculated, and results are used for further design changes. Additionally, radiation simulation on thermal shields are presented, which is used as ambient temperature for the heat transfer of the A-frame assembly. Furthermore, a full model of the entire outer divertor ring is presented with its toroidal temperature distribution. Finally, thermal stress of the plate is analyzed besides an analytical calculation of the maximum allowable temperature difference.