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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.”
Ikuji Takagi, Kouta Kodama,* Kazuo Shin, Kunio Higashi, Hideki Zushi, Tohru Mizuuchi, Tohru Senjyu, Masahiro Wakatani, Tokuhiro Obiki
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 25 | Number 2 | March 1994 | Pages 137-146
Technical Paper | First-Wall Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30263
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two experiments on the plasma-driven permeation (PDP) of deuterium through nickel membranes were conducted. One was an observation of the permeation during the discharge cleaning of Heliotron E, one of the largest helical systems. Significant amounts of deuterium permeated. The deuterium permeation was also observed during a helium discharge, where deuterium recycled between the plasma and chamber walls. Because the permeation was strongly influenced by impurities such as oxygen on the plasma-facing surface of the membrane, the PDP would be useful for a diagnosis of the discharge cleaning. The second experiment was a study on transient behaviors of the permeation when nickel membranes were exposed to a deuterium plasma for short times. The small device with a radio-frequency plasma was used to simulate pulse operations of large plasma devices. The maximum permeation flux at the nonsteady state was found to be nearly proportional to the exposure time of the plasma. Numerical calculations reproduced very well the transient behaviors of the deuterium permeation in the pulse-exposure experiments. Based on the results of the two experiments, it is expected that the deuterium PDP from neutral beam injection-heated plasmas in Heliotron E will be observed.