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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.”
Shigeru Akiyama, Shigeyasu Amada
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 23 | Number 4 | July 1993 | Pages 426-434
Technical Paper | Material Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST93-A30135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Structural ceramics are attracting attention in the development of nuclear fusion reactors because they have excellent wear- and heat-resistant characteristics. However, in some applications, they will be exposed to very high temperature and high-heat-flux environments. These ceramics are also subjected to thermal loadings that change rapidly with time. Therefore, it is important to investigate their thermal shock characteristics. A new approach to evaluate the thermal shock resistance of structural ceramics is based on laser pulse irradiation on the ceramic surface. The temperature and thermal stress distributions of cylindrical ceramics under irradiation by laser beams are discussed by using the MARC finite element computer code with arbitrary quadrilateral axisymmetric ring elements. The relationship between the spot diameter of the laser beam and the maximum compressive thermal stress is derived for various power densities of the laser beams. A critical fracture curve is obtained from these relationships that can specify a critical power density for a given laser beam spot diameter. The irradiation experiments are done on a machinable ceramic by using a CO2 laser. Finally, theoretical results are compared with experimental ones. Both results show good agreements. Consequently, this method can be a new standard thermal shock test instead of the water quench test that has been used widely.