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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.”
T. Hayashi, T. Suzuki, M. Yamada, K. Okuno
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 931-935
Fuel Cycle and Tritium Technology | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963058
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to establish the “in-bed” tritium accounting technology for the ITER scale tritium storage system, a gas flowing calorimetry has been studied using a scaled ZrCo bed (25 g tritium capacity). The basic calorimetric characteristics, steady state temperature raise of He gas stream flowing through a secondary coil line fixed in the ZrCo tritide, was measured and correlated with the stored tritium inventory. The results shows that about 4 degrees raise of He stream temperature can be detected for each gram of tritium storage. The sensitivity of this calorimetry is about 0.05 g of tritium, calculated by 0.2 degrees of temperature sensor error. The accuracy is better than 0.25 g of tritium on 25 g storage, evaluated by 2 times of standard deviation from the repeat measurements. This accuracy of < 1 % on full storage capacity is satisfied the target accountability to measure +- 1 gram of tritium on 100 g storage for ITER.