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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.”
A. A. Ivanov, A. V. Burdakov, P. A. Bagryansky
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 1 | July 2015 | Pages 56-62
Technical Paper | Open Magnetic Systems 2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-842
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Axisymmetric magnetic mirrors are capable of confining high-β plasma and, at the same time, enable provision of higher magnetic field in the confinement region compared to non-axisymmetric systems. These advantages and their technical simplicity make them rather attractive as high-flux volumetric neutron sources, fission-fusion hybrids, and in the longer term as pure fusion reactors. The specific issues that still have to be further studied are plasma MHD stability at plasma parameters relevant to fusion applications, too-high plasma end losses, and the relatively low electron temperatures obtained so far in the experiments. These main physics issues were successfully addressed in the recent experiments in the GDT and GOL-3 devices in Novosibirsk. The review concludes with an update of the experimental results from both experimental devices and a discussion about the limiting factors in the current experiments. Specifically, we report on an almost twofold increase of the electron temperature with application of ECR heating, which was obtained in the experiments on the GDT device, and control of plasma rotation profile by injection of an electron beam at the end of the device, which was demonstrated in the GOL-3 device.