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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.”
Shigefumi Okada, Susumu Ueki, Haruhiko Himura, Seiichi Goto
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 27 | Number 3 | April 1995 | Pages 341-344
Compact Torus (Field-Reversed Configuration, Spheromak) Concepts | doi.org/10.13182/FST95-A11947101
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Confinement magnetic field of a field-reversed-configuration (FRC) plasma is reduced by a factor of about 10 and plasma density is decreased by a factor of about 100 without lowering the temperature seriously by translating a theta-pinch produced FRC plasma axially into a large bore metal vessel. Reduced magnetic field brings the lower-hybrid frequency into a range easily detected by magnetic probes. Search for wave activities in the FRC plasma for a wide frequency range disclosed magnetic field fluctuations in the lower-hybrid-drift frequency range for the first time in the FRC plasma. The identification of the mode is not done yet but the fluctuation level is close to the values predicted by theories on the LHD instability. This fluctuation level is not large enough to account for the transport rate of the particles from the FRC plasma.
