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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.”
Vito Renda, Gianfranco Federici, Loris Papa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 13 | Number 3 | March 1988 | Pages 473-483
Technical Paper | Alpha-Particle Workshop / Divertor System | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25125
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The latest Joint Research Centre (JRC)-Ispra proposal is presented to support the design of a divertor concept that has long been considered the most crucial component of the plasma impurity control system for the Next European Torus (NET) tokamak fusion reactor. Because of the harsh tokamak environment, the divertor panel is the plasma facing component that suffers the most severe loading conditions, such as high thermal stresses, thermal fatigue, severe erosion rates, and neutron damage. An analysis of a new divertor panel concept has evolved from the previous studies carried out at JRC-Ispra. The materials considered in this study are AISI 316 stainless steel for the cooling tubes, pure copper for the heat sink, and W-5 Re alloy or graphite for the protective armor. The panel is cooled by pressurized water circulating in U-tubes. A preliminary thermohydraulic analysis has been carried out to evaluate a set of reference parameters, such as optimum coolant velocity, maximum outlet water temperature, convective heat exchange coefficient, and the expected pressure drops in the channels. Thermal and mechanical calculations, performed by using the finite element technique, showed encouraging results about the engineering feasibility of the pressure boundary of the divertor for loading conditions similar to those of NET double null, assumed as the reference mainframe.