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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.”
Masanori Araki, Satoshi Suzuki, Kazuyoshi Sato, Masato Akiba
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 674-679
Divertor Design and Experiments | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963014
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is a key issue to design robust divertor modules for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). The divertor module, which consists of a cassette body with high heat flux components, has to be designed to handle not only severe particle fluxes and thermal loads from the main plasmas, but also various electromagnetic forces during the operations. In particular, the electromagnetic force induced by eddy currents during plasma disruptions is the most severe condition from engineering design point of view. Based on the ITER disruption scenarios, dynamic electromagnetic forces of the divertor module induced by the eddy currents have been analyzed. To simplify modeling, the actively cooled structure made of copper alloys was considered because of its much lower electrical resistivity compared to the other materials. In the analyses, parametric studies related to electrical connections, divertor cassette configurations and disruption scenarios, have been considered. Based on the electromagnetic force analyses, elastic stress analysis has also been performed. In particular at the vertical displacement event, analytical results show that the maximum force over 5 MN/m2 which corresponds to the elastic stress of as high as several hundreds MPa is expected in the divertor high heat flux components and that some design modifications for the mitigation of the electromagnetic force will be necessary.