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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.”
J. D. Galambos, L. John Perkins
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 25 | Number 2 | March 1994 | Pages 176-181
Technical Paper | Fusion Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30266
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
If the next-step International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) is designed to operate at finite energy multiplication (Q ∼ 10 to 20), as opposed to ignition (Q ∼ ∞), appreciable reductions in size and cost will result. Ignition will be attainable in such a “high-Q targeted” device under slightly enhanced confinement conditions. For example, with the nominal design guidelines from the ITER Conceptual Design Activity (CDA), designing for Q = 15 instead of ignition results in ∼20% savings in size and cost. Ignition would still be achievable in such a reduced-size device if the L-mode energy confinement enhancement factor (i.e., H factor) is ∼15% higher than the assumed nominal value of 2.0. This size/cost impact is large compared to other sensitivities, and the range of H-fact or improvement needed to recoup ignition is small compared to the uncertainty in the confinement scalings themselves.
