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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.”
Ana M. Schwendt, Arthur Nobile, Peter L. Gobby, Warren P. Steckle, Jr., Denis G. Colombant, John D. Sethian, Daniel Thomas Goodin, Gottfried Ernst Alfred Besenbruch
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 2 | March 2003 | Pages 217-229
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A262
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tritium inventory of direct drive inertial fusion energy (IFE) target filling facilities is examined in the interest of minimizing the tritium inventory. A model is described that has been developed to evaluate the tritium inventory of the target filling process as a function of filling and layering parameters, as well as target design parameters. Previous studies by A. Nobile et al. showed that the temperature and the fill system void fraction have a significant effect on the tritium inventory. The current study uses the model to examine the effect of deuterium-tritium (DT) ice layering time and density of the CH foam in the target on the tritium inventory. The study shows that increasing the foam density and decreasing the DT ice layering time significantly reduce the tritium inventory. Fortunately, one-dimensional target design calculations indicate that the foam density in the direct drive target can be increased to ~200 mg/cm3 without significant degradation of the target yield. Having evaluated and minimized the theoretical tritium inventory, calculations were performed with more realistic batch filling scenarios. The inventories associated with "real" filling scenarios approach the theoretical minimum inventory as the number of batches is increased, resulting in tritium inventories that seem acceptable for future IFE target DT filling facilities.