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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.”
Hongyu Bai, Yanfang Bi, Jingrong Wang, Ming Zhuang, Ping Zhu, Linhai Sheng, Qiyong Zhang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 42 | Number 1 | July 2002 | Pages 162-166
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A224
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
HT-7U is a fully superconducting tokamak. All of the toroidal field and poloidal field superconducting magnets are made of NbTi superconductor and are designed to operate at 3.8 K in the steady-state operation mode. The magnet system will be cooled with forced-flow supercritical helium to this temperature level with an equivalent refrigeration capacity of ~2 kW/4.4 K. To satisfy this requirement, a helium refrigerator is designed to be able to provide the cooling power at 3.5, 4.5, and 80 K for the coils, supports, and thermal shields. The refrigerator can also produce liquid helium for the cooling of the current leads. This paper describes the cryogenic system of HT-7U, the refrigeration process and helium plant, and the forced-flow cooling requirement of the superconducting magnets.