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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.”
Mahmoud Z. Youssef, Anil Kumar, Mohamed A. Abdou, Chikara Konno, Fujio Maekawa, Yujiro Ikeda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 953-963
Neutronics Experiments and Analysis (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963736
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
As part of a collaboration with Japan, the U.S. participated in several fusion integral experiments that simulate the design features of the shielding blanket of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, ITER. The purpose of these efforts is to resolve the critical issues associated with the neutronics R&D tasks of ITER, among which is the adequacy of the newly developed FENDL-1 database. For that purpose, JAERI has constructed a cylindrical test assembly of dimension 1.2 D × 1.2 L m and made of front multi-layers of SS316 and water with an embedded smaller zone consists of multi-layers of super conducting magnet (SCM) stimulant and SS316. Measured parameters, covering the neutron energy range from 14 MeV down to thermal energy, were taken inside the SS316 and the SCM layers at 9 locations up to a depth of 91.4 cm. In one experiment (Assembly#l), a 1.27 cm B4C + 3.8 cm Pb layer was added in front of the SCM multi-layer zone. This layer is not included in Assembly#2. As in previous experiments, the 14 MeV source is housed inside a source reflector can (20 cm-thick) and located at a distance of 30 cm from the assembly. The U.S. analysis reported here was performed with 175n-42g FENDL/MG-1.0 (multigroup) as well as ENDF/B-VI data using the DORT 2-D code. Analysis was also performed with the Monte Carlo (MC) continuous energy data, FENDL/MC-1.0. The calculated parameters were compared to the following measured data: (a) neutron spectrum below 2 MeV, (b) foil activation rates such as Nb-93(n,2n)Nb-93m, Al-27(n,α)Na-24, In-115(n,n)In-115m, Au-197(n, γ)Au-198, and B-10(n,α)Li-7, (c) fission rate U-235(n,f) and U-238(n,f). (d) gamma-ray spectrum, and (e) gamma-ray heating rate.