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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.”
S. K. Combs, L. R. Baylor, C. R. Foust, A. Frattolillo, M. S. Lyttle, S. J. Meitner, S. Migliori
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 68 | Number 2 | September 2015 | Pages 319-325
Technical Paper | Proceedings of TOFE-2014 | doi.org/10.13182/FST14-925
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An existing pipe gun test facility at ORNL was used for an experimental study of propellant gas loads required for ITER-relevant pellet injection, with the key objective of determining the minimal amount of gas required for optimal pellet speeds. Two pellet sizes were tested, with nominal 4.4 and 3.2 mm diameters comparable to pellets planned for fueling and ELM pacing in ITER, respectively. A novel scheme was used to freeze solid pellets from room temperature gas; this facilitated operations at higher temperatures (14.5 to 16.5 K, similar to those planned for extruder operations for ITER pellet injectors) and thus lower pellet breakaway pressures and gas loads. Most of the single-shot D2 pellet tests were carried out with a relatively low H2 propellant gas load of ~0.0133 bar-L. Some limited testing was also carried out with a mixed propellant gas that consisted mostly of D2, which is more representative of the gas that will be used for ITER pellet injection. In testing it was found that this reference gas load resulted in pellet speeds in close proximity to a speed limit (~300 m/s) previously determined in a series of tests with D2 pellets shot through a mock-up of the curved guide tubes planned for the ITER installation (for pellet fueling from the magnetic high-field side). The equipment, operations, and test results are presented and discussed, with emphasis on the relevance for ITER operations.