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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.”
Atsushi Imasaki, Fumitalce Murakami, Kunihiko Hattori, Tsuyoshi Yagai, Masashi Ashino, Akira Ando, Hiroyuki Tobari, Mikirou Yoshinuma, Masaaki Inutake
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 39 | Number 1 | January 2001 | Pages 324-327
Poster Presentations | doi.org/10.13182/FST01-A11963471
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Macroscopic behavior of a high-beta and supersonic plasma flow is investigated in the HITOP device. It is found that a cylindrical plasma begins to rotate eccentrically around the center axis in a divergent magnetic mirror. The eccentric radius increases with the increase in the mirror ratio and the beta value of the plasma. The rotating frequency changes with the radial electric field in the plasma, which is controlled by end-plate biasing technique. The rotation direction and its velocity are consistent with E × B drift motion. This behavior seems to be a flute/ballooning mode driven by static and dynamic pressure gradient in a bad curvature region of the divergent field line.
