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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.”
Sergei Zimin
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 2 | September 1994 | Pages 153-167
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A30339
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Although neutron-induced activation in a fusion reactor is a nonlinear problem whose solution requires the use of both neutron transport and activation codes, a simplified analytical approach to bismuth and polonium build-up in lead is proposed to estimate the polonium inventory and the related biological hazards of LiPb-bearing blankets. All neutronic reactions of polonium build-up in lead and in its bismuth impurities are surveyed and discussed. The contribution of the different possible chains to the build-up of polonium is evaluated. A set of differential equations for the densities of 209Bi and 210Po isotopes in the lead is worked into simplified, easy-to-use expressions. These analytical formulas obtained for the densities can be used for the estimation of both the bismuth and the polonium densities after any reactor operation time and allow identification of the build-up mechanisms of those isotopes. A simplified formula for polonium inventory estimations at any blanket zone is proposed as well. The polonium inventory evaluation takes into account the initial conditions (primarily bismuth impurity in the lead) and the reactor operation conditions, such as the average availability of a fusion reactor and the blanket operation scenario.