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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.”
Jorge J. Sanchez, Warren H. Giedt
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 44 | Number 4 | December 2003 | Pages 811-819
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST44-811
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effects of natural convection in the tamping gas in a vertical hohlraum on the heat flow from a frozen layer of deuterium and tritium (D-T) on the inner surface of a target capsule is investigated numerically. The energy released from tritium decay within the capsule is transferred through the tamping gas to the cooling rings on each end of the hohlraum. The thickness of the frozen layer must be uniform. This means that the heat flow from it to the capsule must be spherically symmetric and that the temperature of the inner surface of the D-T layer will be uniform and in equilibrium with its vapor. The objective of this study was to determine the combination of boundary conditions and thin films for restricting convection in the tamping gas, which satisfy these requirements. With the capsule mounted between two thin plastic films, clockwise-flow convection cells form in the upper and lower gas regions. When this flow contacts the capsule, the temperature variation along the inner surface of the D-T layer was as great as 3 mK. This was reduced to 180 K by introducing thin films to isolate the capsule from the convection cells. Further reduction of this value to ~50 K was achieved by modifying the boundary conditions.