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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.”
S. Strack, S. Diabaté, J. Müller, W. Raskob
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 951-956
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-A30528
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
For estimations of the ingestion dose of tritium the dynamic behaviour of organically bound tritium (OBT) is studied in the framework of safety considerations for the nuclear fusion technology. In diet relevant plants, uch as wheat, the formation of OBT and the subsequent translocation into the seeds, till the time of harvest have been investigated in chamber experiments. Sets of field data on photosynthesis, transpiration and stomatal resistances at individual plants during several vegetation periods have been collected by gas exchange measurements. These data were used to test the recently developed model ‘Plant-OBT’. The paper analyses the results of comparisons between calculated and observed tritium concentrations in wheat plants after short-term exposures to atmospheric tritiated water (HTO). While the final OBT concentrations in the grains can be Simulated sufficiently, the modelling of the OBT formation and turnover processes in the leaves seems unsatisfactory so far. The unsolved problems in the recent OBT modelling approach are discussed.