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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.T. Hunt, K.R. Manes, J.R. Murray, P.A. Renard, R. Sawicki, J.B. Trenholme, W. Williams
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 26 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 767-771
National Ignition Facility | Proceedings of the Eleventh Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy New Orleans, Louisiana June 19-23, 1994 | doi.org/10.13182/FST94-A40247
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Controlled nuclear fusion initiated by highly intense laser beams has been the subject of experiment for many years. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) represents the culmination of design efforts to provide a laser facility that will successfully demonstrate fusion ignition in the laboratory. In this so-called inertial confinement approach, energetic driver beams (laser, X ray, or charged particle) heat the outer surface of a spherical capsule containing deuterium and tritium (DT) fuel. As the capsule surface explosively evaporates, reaction pressure compresses the DT fuel causing the central core of the fuel to reach extreme density and temperature. When the central temperature is high enough, DT fusion reactions occur. The energy released from these reactions further heats the compressed fuel, and fusion burn propagates outward through the colder regions of the capsule much more rapidly than the inertially confined capsule can expand. The resulting fusion reactions yield many times more energy than was absorbed from the driver beams. Figure 1 summarizes the inertial confinement fusion (ICF) process.