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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.”
Takeshi Muranaka, Nagayoshi Shima
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 54 | Number 1 | July 2008 | Pages 297-300
Technical Paper | Environment and Safety | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-A1817
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An electrolytic cell, essentially composed of a solid polymer electrolyte (SPE) film and porous dimensionally stable electrodes (DSEs), was designed to reduce the electrolytic voltage in an electrolyzer. The device achieved a tritium recovery factor of 0.836±0.021 for a volume reduction factor of five when operated at a current of 6 A, while maintaining a water bath temperature below 2 °C. Sample and standard waters were simultaneously enriched by connecting two electrolytic cells in series. The sample water was first enriched using a commercially available apparatus with a large electrolytic current of 50 A until the volume in the sample water was reduced to approximately one fifth of the original volume. This "two-stage electrolysis" enrichment was applied to coastal seawaters from the Aomori prefecture. Tritium concentrations, ranging from 0.2 to 0.5 Bq/L, were found, with a measurement error (i.e. a statistical error of one sigma) of ca. 10% of the obtained values.