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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.”
Masahiro Kinoshita
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 9 | Number 3 | May 1986 | Pages 492-498
Technical Paper | Tritium System | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An efficient dynamic simulation code for hydrogen isotope distillation columns is developed. Because of the great dimensionality and stiffness of the basic ordinary differential equations to be integrated, the long computing time required is often the major stumbling block in computer simulation work for column dynamics. Publicly available integration algorithms are reviewed and some are tested. The Ballard-Brosilow algorithm is chosen as the most attractive one in terms of both stability and simplicity. The algorithm requires only solution of linear tridiagonal equations and scalar bubble point calculations at every time step. Replacing the improved Euler algorithm in the previous code by the Ballard-Brosilow algorithm and determining an adjustment method for the time step size, the resultant computer code presents a remarkable success: A typical numerical example simulating column dynamics from a steady state to another indicates that the calculational results can be obtained with engineering accuracy in about two orders of magnitude shorter computing time.