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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.”
J. R. Easoz, R. Bajaj, R. E. Gold, J. W. H. Chi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 780-784
Blanket and First Wall Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22955
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper reports work performed under Program Element I (PE-I) of the First Wall, Blanket, and Shield Program, the principal objectives of which are the testing of first wall design concepts to support the design of fusion reactor first walls and the verification of analytical techniques and design tools. The test facility, ESURF, consists of a 36 kW continuous duty electron beam, evacuated target chamber, and a 6.9 MPa water loop for active cooling of test pieces. Long pulse “steady state” surface heat loads are simulated by rastering the beam in two dimensions, while disruption heat loads are simulated by imposing a focused, stationary beam for a fixed length of time on the target area. Initial test pieces consisted of stainless steel (Type 316) tubes. Tests to date have included thermal-hydraulic characterization of the specimens, thermal cycling up to 500 cycles, disruption heat load simulations, and combined disruption heat loads with thermal cycling. The test results reported here address the verification of predicted thermomechanical response of the specimens, the effects of disruption heat loads on surface melting and crack formation, and the affect of thermal cycling on crack formation/propagation.