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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.”
Xiaohua Cao, Benfu Yang, Huajin Tan, Jingping Wan, Changyong Jiang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 3 | May 2002 | Pages 892-896
Material Interaction and Permeation | Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Tritium Science and Technology Tsukuba, Japan November 12-16, 2001 | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A22713
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The adsorption and desorption behaviors of tritium on the surfaces of stainless steel, copper, molybdenum and Kovar were studied. After the exposure in tritium gas ( 9 kPa gaseous tritium, 2 minutes exposure at 873 K and 40 minutes cooling ), the tritium desorbed at room temperature and during heating up to 1123 K and total sorbed tritium of the samples were measured. The results showed that the desorbed tritium at room temperature was only 1∼6% of total sorbed tritium and its amount order was: Kovar >copper > stainless steel > molybdenum. The total desorbed tritium was ranging from 2 to 22 MBq/cm2, the largest is for Kovar and the smallest is for stainless steel. The tritium released from these materials at room temperature and during heating was mostly in the form of HTO. The thermo-desorption spectra of these materials were obtained. It was found that at least 5, 3, 3, 4 sorption states of tritium exist in the exposed Kovar, molybdenum, copper and stainless steel samples respectively. Doping 1% hydrogen in the carrying gas of helium during the thermo-desorption had rather effect on this process.