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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.-P. Hogge, T. P. Goodman, S. Alberti, F. Albajar, K. A. Avramides, P. Benin, S. Bethuys, W. Bin, T. Bonicelli, A. Bruschi, S. Cirant, E. Droz, O. Dumbrajs, D. Fasel, F. Gandini, G. Gantenbein, S. Illy, S. Jawla, J. Jin, S. Kern, P. Lavanchy, C. Liévin, B. Marlétaz, P. Marmillod, A. Perez, B. Piosczyk, I. Pagonakis, L. Porte, T. Rzesnickl, U. Siravo, M. Thumm, M. Q. Tran
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 2 | February 2009 | Pages 204-212
Technical Paper | Electron Cyclotron Emission and Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A4072
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The European Union is working toward providing 2-MW, coaxial-cavity, continuous-wave (cw) 170-GHz gyrotrons for ITER. Their design is based on results from an experimental preprototype tube having a pulse length of several milliseconds, in operation at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe (FZK) for several years now. The first industrial prototype tube was designed for cw operation but, in a first phase, aimed at a pulse length of 1 s at the European Gyrotron Test Facility in Lausanne, Switzerland, as part of a phased testing/development program (1 s, 60 s, cw). The first experimental results of the operation of this prototype gyrotron are reported here. The microwave generation was characterized at very short pulse length (<0.01 s) using a load on loan from FZK, and the highest measured output power was 1.4 MW, at a beam energy significantly lower than the design value (83 kV instead of 90 kV), limited by arcing in the tube. The radio-frequency (rf) beam profile was measured to allow reconstruction of the phase and amplitude profile at the window and to provide the necessary information permitting proper alignment of the compact rf loads prior to pulse extension. Arcs in the tube limited the pulse length extension to a few tens of milliseconds. According to present planning, the tube is going to be opened, inspected, and refurbished, depending on the results of the inspection, to allow testing of an improved version of the mode launcher and replacement of some subassemblies.