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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.”
Y. Oyama, C. Konno, Y. Ikeda, H. Maekawa, K. Kosako, T. Nakamura, A. Kumar, M. Youssef, M. Abdou, E. Bennett
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 1879-1884
Neutronic | Proceedings of the Ninth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Oak Brook, Illinois, October 7-11, 1990) | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29617
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Neutronics experiments for an annular blanket system have been performed using a simulated line DT neutron source. The line source was simulated by moving point source in which the annular blanket was oscillated relatively on the axis of the DT neutron target. The measurements were performed in both ways of continuous and stepwise motions. The former was applied to heavy irradiation experiments such as the foil activation method for reaction rate and Li2O pellet technique for tritium production rate (TPR). The latter was to on-line methods such as NE213 and Li-glass scintillators for spectrum and TPR of 6Li and 7Li. Especially the latter case provides contribution of neutrons generated at each point on the line source to the reaction at the detector position. This corresponds to an importance distribution at the center axis of the annular system and can be compared to the calculated adjoint flux at the source positions.