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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. Raskob
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 934-939
Tritium Safety | Proceedings of the Fifth Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion, and Isotopic Applications Belgirate, Italy May 28-June 3, 1995 | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A30525
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In view of the public acceptance and the licensing procedure of projected fusion reactors, the release of tritium during normal operation as well as after accidents is a significant safety aspect. Tritium, being chemically identical to hydrogen and thus interacting directly with water and organic substances, differs considerably from the behaviour of other radionuclides in the environment. Therefore, the two consequence assessment codes UFOTRI and NORMTRI have been developed and applied to estimate the doses to the public from releases of tritium under accidental and routine conditions, respectively. In the frame of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) and SEAFP (Safety and Environmental Aspects of Fusion Power) the dose/release translation has been determined for typical and various worst case release scenarios. Under worst case accidental release conditions, the dose/release translation for the early dose to an individual at the fence may range from 0.5 to 1 mSv/g HTO. The result for the EDE at the fence is up to 3 mSv/g HTO. The collective accidental dose/release translation is about 2.5 manSv/g HTO. However, due to processes inside the facility, only a small fraction of the mobilised activity may be released into the environment. Finally, the current status of the present assessment models is shortly analysed with regard to the strength and weakness of their approaches which led to the recommendation to concentrate on the plant physiological parts of the tritium codes.
