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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.”
Diethelm Schroeder-Richter
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 29 | Number 4 | July 1996 | Pages 468-486
Technical Paper | Blanket Engineering | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30691
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
On the basis of a new hypothesis of thermodynamic states (the superheated wall layer is not metastable but saturated at locally elevated pressure), an analytical estimation is presented of the whole boiling curve [except critical heat flux (CHF), but fixed at this point, known by experiments or correlation]. The curvature of the boiling curve (bubbly flow) is deduced from thermodynamics of irreversible processes. The wall temperature corresponding to departure from nucleate boiling is calculated from balances of momentum at the interfaces, based on the assumption that the speed of sound may be a limit for maximum evaporation mass flux and thereby heat flux, i.e., CHF. Heat flux during transition boiling is determined from balance of energy at the rewetting front. At the Leidenfrost point, a minimum heat flux is neglected. Thus, Leidenfrost temperature, as well as wall temperature at CHF, can be calculated analytically without using empirical coefficients. Heat flux of bubbly flow and transition boiling can be matched at any empirical CHF point. All these results are determined from properties of state alone, i.e., the models can be verified for all fluids including water and liquid metals (so far at moderate heat fluxes). Especially the latter two fluids are of interest for high-heat-flux application, and the precondition of low void fraction is expected to be fulfilled.