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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.”
BéLa Karlovitz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 2 | Number 4 | October 1982 | Pages 617-622
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST82-A20802
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The phenomenon of electromagnetic induction is considered in complex high temperature plasma systems. Thermal energy of such fully ionized plasma is really energy of the magnetic vortex fields surrounding the randomly moving ions and electrons. In an expanding plasma stream, moving across the containing magnetic field, random thermal motion of the ions and electrons is converted into ordered motion and thereby random magnetic energy of the plasma into magnetic energy of an ordered field. Consequently, in contrast to simple systems consisting of coils and magnets only, an expanding plasma stream can maintain net outflow of ordered magnetic energy from a closed volume for an indefinite length of time. Conversion of thermal energy of plasma into ordered magnetic energy by the thermodynamic expansion process leads to the expectation of a new induction phenomenon: the generation of a unidirectional induced electromotive force of unlimited duration, measured in a closed loop at rest relative to the magnetic field, by the expansion work of the plasma stream. No change is required in the differential form of Maxwell's equations for the existence of this induction phenomenon, only the definition of the concept of rate of change of magnetic flux needs to be modified in the macroscopic equations to correspond to the rate of flow of magnetic energy across a closed surface. An experimental test of the predicted induction phenomenon is proposed.