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Fusion Energy
This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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.”
V. Ya. Goloborod'ko, V. V. Lutsenko, S. N. Reznik, V. A. Yavorskij
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | May 1995 | Pages 292-297
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30391
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three-dimensional Fokker-Planck simulation of collisional losses of mega-electron-volt fusion products in axisymmetric tokamaks with plasma currents I < 2 MA is carried out. The calculations take into account both loss due to radial diffusion and loss caused by pitch-angle scattering in the first-orbit loss region in velocity space. Collisional losses of deuterium-deuterium (D-D) fusion products in the energy range 0.5 ≤ ε/ε0 ≤ 1 (where ε0 is the birth energy) are found to be increased with plasma current and comparable to a first-orbit loss at I > 1.5 MA. The loss mechanism considered may be responsible for the observed experimentally delayed losses of D-D fusion products in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR). The dependencies of collisional losses on plasma current, effective charge number of the plasma (Zeff), and aspect ratio are investigated. The distributions of escaped ions over pitch angles, energies, and poloidal angles are evaluated. The fraction of collisionally lost fast fusion products is shown to scale like (ν⊥/νs)0.6 or (here ν⊥ and νs are characteristic collision rates of pitch-angle scattering and slowing down, respectively). The approach used may be considered as an alternative to the approach based on Monte Carlo modeling of scattering and can serve as a validity check of the latter.