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This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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.”
Paul E. Moroz
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 1 | September 1996 | Pages 40-49
Technical Paper | Experimental Device | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A30761
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new type of device for plasma confinement that can be categorized as a stellarator-tokamak hybrid is proposed. This device features Wo systems of coils: the standard toroidal field coils of a tokamak and an additional system of simple coils to produce stellarator-like effects. A system of vertically inclined planar coils is used for numerical calculations, although other possible engineering solutions can be found. The system of poloidal field coils is required to compensate for the vertical magnetic field induced by the inclined coils. The possible modernization of a tokamak into such a hybrid is outlined. (The Phaedrus-T tokamak of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is kept in mind in the examples considered.) Because of the availability of two separate coil sets, the device considered is able to operate as a pure stellarator, as a pure tokamak, or as their hybrid when both coil systems are powered. The main unique features and regimes of operation would be expected to include smooth transition from the pure tokamak regime to the pure stellarator regime and back and to possibly operate the device in an alternating-current regime. Devices of this type combine the attractive properties of both tokamaks and stellarators. They feature inductive current, which is efficient for plasma heating and/or current drive, and good plasma confinement, typical of tokamaks. At the same time, they feature the prolonged or continuous plasma discharge operation typical of stellarators.