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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.”
W. L. Baker, J. H. Degnan, J. D. Beason, G. Bird, C. N. Boyer, J. S. Buff, S. K. Coffey, J. F. Davis III, M. H. Frese, J. D. Graham, K. E. Hackett, D. J. Hall, J. L. Holmes, E. A. Lopez, R. E. Peterkin, Jr., D. W. Price, N. F. Roderick, S. W. Seiler, P. J. Turchi
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 2 | March 1995 | Pages 124-131
Experimental Device | Special Section: Pulsed High-Density Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30369
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Vacuum inductive-store, plasma flow switch-driven implosion experiments have been performed using the Shiva Star capacitor bank (1300 µf, 3 nH, 120 kV, 9.4 MJ). A coaxial plasma gun arrangement is employed to store magnetic energy in the vacuum volume upstream of a dynamic discharge during the 3- to 4-µs rise of current from the capacitor bank. Motion of the discharge off the end of the inner conductor of the gun releases this energy to implode a coaxial cylindrical foil. The implosion loads are 5-cm-radius, 2-cm-long, 200 to 400 µg/cm2 cylinders of aluminum or aluminized Formvar. With 5 MJ stored initially in the capacitor bank, more than 9 MA are delivered to the implosion load with a rise time of ∼200 ns. The subsequent implosion results in a radiation output of 0.95 MJ at a power exceeding 5 TW (assuming isotropic emission). Experimental results and related two-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations are discussed.