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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.”
J. F. Latkowski, W. R. Meier
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 2 | September 2003 | Pages 300-304
Technical Paper | Fusion Energy - Advanced Designs | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A351
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Heavy Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory (HIF-VNL) recently initiated an effort to reach an updated, self-consistent, integrated point design for a thick-liquid inertial fusion energy power plant. We call this design the Robust Point Design. As part of this effort, the shielding design of the final focusing system has been evaluated, in an iterative fashion, with other elements of the design. The present work reports on the status of the shielding design from the perspectives of superconductor/insulator radiation lifetimes, recirculating power needed to counter nuclear heating, and neutron activation, which affects both system maintainability and waste management. Models used herein include the last three focusing magnets, and a full, three-dimensional model for the target chamber. Analyses have been performed for 9-by-9 beam arrays, with a total of 120 beams (60 per side). Results and directions for future work are presented.
