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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. W. Moir
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 25 | Number 2 | March 1994 | Pages 129-136
Technical Paper | Energy Conversion | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30262
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A beam direct converter of the Kyoto type, which uses magnetic separation of the D+ and D− leaving the neutralizer, is adapted to a Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory concept of a neutral-beam injector for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, which used electrostatic separation of the D+ and D−. Among the advantages of a direct converter over an ordinary beam dump for the residual D+ and D− beam leaving the neutralizer is that the power density on the beam dump is reduced by a large factor, making heat removal easier. Further, “soft landing” virtually eliminates deuterium-deuterium neutron production on the dump electrodes, a particular advantage in the development stage. In addition, the total power consumed is less. This paper addresses the technological obstacle to feasibility, which is holding the large voltage (+1.6 and −1.6 MV for a 1.6-MeV neutral beam). The electrode system in the present design uses 15 grading electrodes around each 1.6 MV collector with 100 kV between them. Each grading electrode is subdivided into two. The total stored energy is 260 J (4 J per electrode) and an average of 10 kV/cm on the insulators. The calculated efficiency is 92%.
