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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.”
William R. Sutton III, Dieter J. Sigmar+, George H. Miley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 7 | Number 3 | May 1985 | Pages 374-390
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A24557
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An alpha-driven fast magnetosonic wave instability is investigated in tokamak plasmas for propagation transverse to the external magnetic field at frequencies several times the alpha gyrorate. A two-dimensional differential quasi-linear diffusion equation is derived in cylindrical υ⊥-υ∥ geometry. The quasi-linear diffusion coefficients in the small parameter k∥/k⊥ are expanded and the problem is reduced to one dimension by integrating out the υ∥ dependence. Reactor relevant information is obtained using data from the one-dimensional formulation in a 1½-dimensional tokamak transport code. Contour plots of the alpha threshold fraction are used to identify the instability regions in the ne-Ti plane. Alpha/background electron fractions as low as 10−6 to 10−4 may trigger the instability. For a typical reactor-size tokamak, an enhancement of the fraction of the alpha energy transferred to ions by as much as 1.5 can occur for Ti = Te at 7 keV. Still, due to the rapid equilibration of electron and ion temperatures, a < 1 to 2% increase in fusion power occurs overall.
