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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.”
Ken-ichi Hattori, Yoichi Hirano, Yasuyuki Yagi, Toshio Shimada, Kiyoshi Hayase
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 4 | November 1995 | Pages 1619-1633
Technical Paper | Plasma Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30429
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Zero-dimensional power balance is analyzed, and an operation boundary is deduced in a “beam-assisted reversed-field pinch”; the latter utilizes partial poloidal current drive by neutral beams so that transport losses arising from magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)-dynamo, i.e., tearing mode instability are reduced. Changes of power flow and heat conductivity due to a beam driven current are treated by considering an MHD-dynamo-based power balance model that assumes linear dependence of magnetic fluctuation level on the externally driven current. It is shown that a ratio of a beam driven current to a dynamo current must not exceed ∼40% regarding a beta-limit in the next generation of plasma experiments (minor radius/major radius = 0.6m/1.8 m, plasma current = 1 MA, poloidal beta = 0.1). At that point, the energy confinement time is predicted to increase by a multiple or so of that estimated from the MHD dynamo model without a current drive.