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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.”
Kokooo, I. Murata, D. Nakano, A. Takahashi, F. Maekawa, Y. Jkeda
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | November 1998 | Pages 980-984
Neutronics Experiments and Analysis (Poster Session) | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A11963740
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Benchmark experiments on vanadium and vanadium alloy with D-T neutrons have been done at two angles, 0 degrees and 24.9 degrees, using the slab geometry and the time-of-flight (TOF) method. Data were collected for neutron energies ranging from 50 keV to 15 MeV. For vanadium, measurements were made for three slab thicknesses, i.e., 50.8 mm, 1524 mm, and 254 mm, whereas for the vanadium alloy, measurements were made only for 101.6-mm thickness. The measured neutron spectra were compared with MCNP-4A calculations using evaluated nuclear data from the JENDL-3.2, JENDL Fusion-File(IENDL-FF), FENDL/E-1.0 and European Fusion File veraon-3(EFF-3) libraries. The calculated data show reasonable agreement with the measurement, however, some differences are worth noting. Calculations for a slab thickness of 50.8 mm over the energy range from 0.05 to 0.1 MeV underestimate the measurements by about 40% at an angle of 24.9 degrees, while calculations for the energy range from 0.1 to 1.0 MeV, overestimate the measurements by about 40% at an angle of 0 degrees. Calculations made using the JENDL-FF library show good agreement with measurements for energies greater than 11 MeV. Calculations made using the FENDL/E-1.0 library give smaller results than any of the other three libraries in the energy range from 5 to 11 MeV.