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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.”
M. E. Sawan
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 66 | Number 1 | July-August 2014 | Pages 272-277
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST13-717
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The amount and type of gaseous and metallic transmutants produced in tungsten (W) when used as a plasma-facing armor in magnetic (MFE) and inertial (IFE) confinement fusion systems were determined and compared to those obtained following irradiation in fission reactors. Up to ∼8% metallic transmutants are generated at the expected lifetime of the fusion blanket. Irradiation in fission reactors to the same fast neutron fluence yields a much larger amount of metallic transmutation products than in fusion systems. While the dominant component in fusion systems is rhenium (Re), osmium (Os) is the main transmutation product in fission reactors. The impact on the W properties needs to be assessed. The results of this work will help guide irradiation experiments in fission reactors to properly simulate the conditions in fusion systems by possible direct implantation of transmutation products in irradiated samples. In addition, the results represent a necessary input for modeling activities aimed at understanding the expected effects on properties.
