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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.”
Karl H. Spatschek
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 41 | Number 2 | March 2002 | Pages 119-134
Kinetic Theory | doi.org/10.13182/FST02-A11963509
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The statistical description of a hot, magnetized, classical plasma is reviewed. The latter represents the appropriate model for a fusion plasma in magnetic confinement. Various approaches are presented. We start with the Fokker-Planck equation for Langevin dynamics. It is shown that also a deterministic model leads to characteristic non-equilibrium behaviors in the so called kinetic regime. The Boltzmann equation for dilute gases is presented, and the differences between the kinetic and the hydrodynamic regimes are worked out. In the main part, the consequences of long-range Coulomb interactions are demonstrated. Several plasma-kinetic equations, like for instance the Balescu-Lenard equation, are discussed. Physical consequences from the linearization of the kinetic equations, e.g. collision frequencies and Landau damping, are elucidated. In the final part of the paper the specific reformulations in magnetized plasmas are investigated. The drift-kinetic and the gyrokinetic approaches are presented. The paper is concluded by an outlook on often used truncations.