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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.”
R. T. McGrath, A. J. Russo, R. B. Campbell, R. D. Watson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 1805-1816
Plasma-Facing Component | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A29981
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Tokamaks currently in operation deposit on the order of 1–30 MW/m2 onto plasma facing surfaces during normal operation and hundreds of MW/m2 for shorter periods of time (0.1–3 ms) during disruptions. Disruption deposited energies on future high-power tokamaks may be well in excess of 20 MJ/m2 Design of plasma facing components (PFCs) for such severe environments requires considerable advancements in materials development, armor tile bonding to actively cooled substrates, heat transfer, and many other areas of engineering concern. Considerable improvements in PFC performance, reliability and lifetime can also be accomplished through improved understanding and control of the edge plasma boundary layer. This paper covers both engineering and edge plasma physics issues that must be addressed in the development of reliable PFCs for ITER. Several specific examples are addressed since a complete treatment of all critical development issues would be lengthy. Topics covered include impurity generation and transport in the boundary layer plasma, materials response to intense pulsed disruption heat loads, runaway electron generation during disruptions, high heat flux performance and PFC fabrication issues. These topics are illustrative examples of the variety of complex issues that must be addressed in the development and design of PFCs.