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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.”
Eric Tucker, J. Gilligan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 33 | Number 2 | March 1998 | Pages 118-129
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A22
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The vapor shield outward expansion rate can be shown to affect energy transport through the vapor shield, thereby influencing the vapor shield effectiveness. To more accurately determine the divertor plate erosion depth from a tokamak fusion reactor disruption or plasma gun sources, it is then necessary to include source plasma (beam) momentum transfer and beam mass deposition to the expanding vapor shield. Other factors such as incident heat flux and target Z value are shown to influence the vapor shield expansion rate as well. Code calculations show that increasing heat fluxes can increase the fraction of vapor shield kinetic energy and lower the fraction f of incident energy transported to the solid. Low-Z materials give higher kinetic energies as well but result in a higher f due to a lower specific heat. These results can also be applied to plasma gun technology to help increase its efficiency. In an electrothermal gun, the plasma expansion rate (rate at which vaporized material travels out of the gun) can cause differing plasma residence times and differing plasma temperatures as well. Determining the mechanisms that influence the vapor shield expansion rate and showing its sensitivity on f can give us a qualitative way of determining how changing parameters can influence plasma gun efficiency. Low-energy (<200 eV) disruption plasmas add much mass as well as momentum to a vapor shield. Mass addition can cause the vapor shield temperature and f to differ for a given incident heat flux and change the vapor shield expansion rate as well. Also, we find that deuterium's shielding effectiveness differs from carbon.