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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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Fusion Science and Technology
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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. D. Akhmetov, V. I. Davydenko
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 35 | Number 1 | January 1999 | Pages 121-125
Oral Presentations | doi.org/10.13182/FST99-A11963835
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We discuss MHD stability of the plasma in the completely axisymmetric end system of AMBAL-M and suggest a physical model to interpret the experimental results. Measurement of the radial plasma pressure profile in the semicusp using a local magnetic probe allowed estimation of the stability safety factor of the end system plasma which occurred to be greater than 3÷4. Gas puffing into the semicusp increases the plasma pressure in this region and hence enhances stability. To explain the observed MHD stability of the end mirror plasma when the MHD stabilizer — semicusp was switched off and the average field line curvature was unfavorable, a model was proposed which assumes that the plasma at the periphery had an electric contact with a limiter. As a result, the potential of flute perturbations vanishes at the plasma periphery. In this case finite Larmor radius effects may stabilize the most dangerous first (global) azimuthal mode because of nonlinear dependence of plasma perturbations on radius.
