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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. Y. Khater, M. E. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 21 | Number 3 | May 1992 | Pages 2051-2055
Safety, Recycling, and Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/FST92-A30023
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radioactivity induced in a typical fusion power reactor was calculated for all elements with atomic number Z ≤ 84 and for different irradiation times. It was shown that the shutdown activity varies widely with the duration of the irradiation time. In general, the activity induced by radionuclides with half-lives that are significantly longer than the period of irradiation increases with increasing the irradiation time. On the other hand, the level of activity generated by any radionuclide with a half-life which is significantly shorter than the reactor life-time reaches a peak early during irradiation and then may starts to drop to lower value before the end of irradiation. The severity of this peaking is determined by the destruction rate of the parent element. The activities generated by long-lived nuclides (important for waste management) in any fusion reactor with life time in the order of 30 years reach their peak values at end-of-life. In the mean time, using the activity and decay heat values generated by short and intermediate-lived radionuclides at the end of reactor life to represent the worst case values used in safety analyses related to a loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and accidental release of radioactive inventory might lead to a substantial underestimation of the results.