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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.”
A. B. Kukushkin, V. A. Rantsev-Kartinov, A. R. Terentiev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | April 1995 | Pages 325-328
Compact Torus (Field-Reversed Configuration, Spheromak) Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11947097
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Experimental results are presented which verify the possibility, formerly predicted,1 of the formation of a closed, spheromak-like magnetic configuration (SLMC) in a plasma focus discharge. The model is based on the self-generated transformation of a toroidal (i.e. azimuthal) field into a poloidal one. At its final stage, the SLMC takes the form of a squeezed spheromak, which includes a combined Z-v-pinch at its major axis, exhibiting a power density several orders of magnitude larger than that measured experimentally on a force-free flux-conserver-confined spheromak formed by helicity injection. The results suggest a possibility of further concentrating the plasma power density by means of compressing the SLMC-trapped plasma by the residual magnetic field.
