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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. Reece Roth
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 7 | Number 1 | January 1985 | Pages 78-89
Technical Paper | Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24520
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
How the plasma stability index beta and the fusion power density influence three performance parameters of fusion reactors burning deuterium-tritium and four advanced fusion fuel cycles was determined. The performance parameters include the total power produced per unit length of the reactor, the mass per unit length, and the specific mass in kilograms per kilowatt. The scaling of these parameters with beta and fusion power density was examined for a common set of conservative engineering assumptions on the allowable wall loading limits, the maximum magnetic field existing in the plasma, the average blanket mass density, etc. It was found that one should employ an entirely different strategy for the design of an engineering test reactor (ETR), designed to test components under high wall loadings and neutron fluences, than one would employ in designing a power plant reactor intended to produce the cheapest possible thermal power. An ETR should not be merely a scaled-down power plant reactor, but should operate at substantially different values of beta and plasma power density, and in some circumstances even use a different confinement concept and fusion fuel cycle.