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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.”
D. L. Hillis, J. T. Hogan, P. Andrew, J. Ehrenberg, M. Groth, M. von Hellermann, L.D. Horton, R. Monk, P. Morgan, M. Stamp
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 941-945
Plasma Facing Components Technology (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963734
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future fusion reactors, like ITER, will rely on an active exhaust system to pump tritium (T) in the divertor and then recirculate it to the fuel stream. Estimation of the T inventory requires a detailed T balance, which determines if T is preferentially enriched relative to D in its pathway from the main plasma to the divertor and pump. On the Joint European Torus (JET), the neutral T concentration in the sub-divertor (pumping plenum and region below the divertor strike point plate) is measured with a modified Penning gauge coupled to a high-resolution spectrometer. In addition, T concentration measurements are made in the plasma edge and strike point region with a spectrometer viewing these regions. The sub-divertor and divertor (region above the strike point plate) T concentration measurements show differences during initial T uptake and retention which are characteristic of wall deposition properties. Since wall retention is one of the factors in calculating the eventual T inventory in a reactor, a detailed study of this process has been undertaken.