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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.”
Tetsuo Tanabe
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 28 | Number 3 | October 1995 | Pages 1278-1283
Tritium Properties and Interaction with Material | 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-A30586
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To apply the surface barrier to reduce hydrogen permeation, the influence of the surface barrier on both the permeation and retention has been investigated considering physical and chemical stability of the barrier in fusion environment. Since energetic hydrogen from the plasma not only impinges directly into subsurface but also removes the front surface barrier, only the back surface barrier works reliably . Oxides, carbide and nitride are candidates as the barrier but their mechanical as well as chemical stability is an important concern, because very large thermal gradient and thermal cycling in fusion environment could enhance the crack initiation and exfoliation of the barrier Therefore an appropriate barrier which is stable under a particular operating condition must be developed The most reliable way to reduce the permeation is to use a metallic layer, but it must be rather thick. It should be noted that the back surface barrier to suppress the permeation inevitably increases the retention Therefore an optimization between the permeation decrease and retention increase is necessary. An alternative way to reduce the plasma or ion driven permeation is to decrease the recombination coefficient at the back surface However, large uncertainty in the observed recombination coefficients does not allow us to rely on the recombination limited process and further work is needed.