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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
C. Malara, A. Viola
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 2 | March 1995 | Pages 19-24
doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11963800
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The problem of tritium recovery from Li17Pb83 blanket of a DEMO fusion reactor is analyzed with the objective of limiting tritium permeation into the cooling water to acceptable levels. To this aim, a mathematical model describing the tritium behaviour in blanket/recovery unit circuit has been formulated. By solving the model equations, tritium permeation rate into the cooling water and trituim inventory in the blanket are evaluated as a function of dimensionless parameters describing the combined effects of overall resistance for tritium transfer from Li17Pb83 alloy to cooling water, circulating rate of the molten alloy in blanket/recovery unit circuit and extraction efficiency of tritium recovery unit. The extraction efficiency is, in turn, evaluated as a function of the operating conditions of recovery unit. The design of tritium recovery unit is then optimized on the basis of the above parametric analysis and the results are herein reported and discussed for a tritium permeation limit of 10 g/day into the cooling water.
