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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.”
H. Miyake, M. Matsuyama, K. Watanabe, D. F. Cowgill
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 2 | March 1992 | Pages 812-817
Material; Storage and Processing | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29848
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We developed a simple system using tritium tracer and thermal desorption techniques to measure the tritium adsorption and/or absorption on/in a material having typical surface conditions: namely, not cleaned surface. The tritium counting devices used were a 2π counter and conventional proportional counter. With this system, the amounts of ad/absorption could be measured without exposing the samples to air after exposing them to tritium gas. The overall efficiency (F) of the 2π counter was described as F = exp(−2.64h), where h is the distance from the sample to the detector. Ad/absorption measurements were carried out for several materials used for fabricating conventional vacuum systems. The results were, in the order of decreasing amounts of ad/absorption, as [fiber reinforced plastics(FRP)] > [nickel(Ni), molybdenum disulfide(MoS2)] > [stainless steel (SS304), iron(Fe), aluminum alloy(A2219)] > [boron nitride(h-BN), silicon carbide(SiC), SS304 passivated by anodic oxidation layers(ASS) and that by boron nitride segregation layers(BSS)]. The relative amounts were about 100 for Ni and 0.1 for ASS and BSS, being normalized to Fe = 1. It was found that the passivation of SS304 with anodic oxidation layers and/or BN segregation layers should be quite valid to decresase the tritium inventory on/in the material walls of tritium handling systems. In addition, it was estimated that this system would be capable of detecting the tritium adsorption of the order of 10−6 in the surface coverage.
