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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.”
Matthew C. Carroll, George H. Miley
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 15 | Number 2 | March 1989 | Pages 183-192
Technical Paper | First Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST89-A25355
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A 2½-dimensional geometric model is presented that allows calculation of power loadings at various points on the first wall of a thermonuclear fusion device. Given average wall power loadings for bremsstrahlung, cyclotron radiation, charged particles, and neutrons, which are determined from various plasma physics computation models, local wall heat loads are calculated by partitioning the plasma volume and surface into cells and superimposing the heating effects of the individual cells on selected first-wall differential areas. Heat loads from the entire plasma are thus determined as a function of position on the first-wall surface. Significant differences in local power loadings were found for most fusion designs, and it was therefore concluded that the effect of local power loading variations must be taken into account when calculating temperatures and heat transfer rates in fusion device first walls.