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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.”
Satoshi Konishi, T. Nagasaki, T. Hayashi, K. Okuno
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 668-672
Plasma Fueling and Fuel Cycle | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40234
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Behavior and improvement of the ZrCo based intermetallic materials for tritium recovery, storage and supply are studied. Compound ZrCo was found to be subject to disproportionation at high temperature under high hydrogen pressure to form ZrCo2 and ZrH2. This process is completely reversed by vacuum treatment at temperature above 500°C for several hours. Kinetics of the disproportionation was described to be similar to phase transition that have apparent incuvation time to take place. The logarithmic reaction rate constant was related to the reciprocal temperature. With some precautions drawn from the results, this reaction is not a problem in practice. For the application that needs prolonged supply of relatively high-pressure tritium, solid solution of ZrCo and HfCo was developed as an improvement of the material. Materials otained by arc melting with compoistion of Zr(1−x)HfxCo (0<x<0.5) exhibits single plateaus in pressure - composition isotherms when hydrogenated. Repeated hydrognation - dehydrogenation cycles did not generate separate ZrCo and HfCo phases. The equilibrium hydrogen pressure in the plateau regions are expressed as a functio of reciprocal temperature and increases with increasing HfCo contents. This material provides controlled equilibrium hydrogen pressure required for specific applications of tritium storage nad supply.
