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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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-K. M. Peng, J. D. Galambos, P. C. Shipe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1729-1738
Magnetic Fusion Reactor and Systems Studies | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29971
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Small steady-state tokamaks for testing divertors and fusion nuclear technologies are considered. Based on present physics and technology data and extrapolation to reduced R0/a, H-D-fueled tokamaks with R0 ∼ 0.6–0.75 m, R0/a ∼ 1.8–2.5, and Bt0 ∼ 1.4–2.2 T can be driven with Ptot ∼ 4.5 MW to maintain Ip ∼ 0.5 MA and produce the ITER-level plasma edge and divertor conditions. Given an adequate steady-state divertor solution and Q∼1 operation based on fusion through the suprathermal component, D-T-fueled tokamaks with R0 ∼ 0.8 m, R0/a ∼ 2, and Bt0 ∼ 4 T can be driven with Ptot ∼ 15 MW to maintain Ip ∼ 4.6 MA and produce a peak neutron wall load WL ∼ 1 MW/m2. Such devices appear possible if the plasma properties at the lower R0/a remain tokamak-like and, for the D-T case, an unshielded center core is feasible. The use of a single conductor as the inboard leg of the toroidal field coils for this purpose is discussed. The physics issues and the design features are identified for such tokamaks with a testing duty factor goal of 10–20%.