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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.”
M. Inutake, A. Ando, K. Hattori, T. Yagai, H. Tobari, Y. Kumagai, H. Miyazaki, S. Fujimura
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 43 | Number 1 | January 2003 | Pages 118-124
Propulsion | doi.org/10.13182/FST03-A11963577
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A supersonic plasma is produced quasi-steadily by use of a magneto-plasma-dynamic arcjet (MPDA) in various shapes of an external magnetic field configuration. An ion acoustic Mach number Mi of the plasma flow is limited to be nearly unity in a uniform magnetic field configuration, while it increases up to almost 3 in a divergent magnetic nozzle configuration. Spatial variations of Mi is well predicted by an isentropic model for a compressible gas. The Mach number decreases in the far downstream region due to charge-exchange collisions between flowing ions and neutral atoms which are produced through surface-recombination on the end wall. Ion heating of the fast flowing plasma has been successfully demonstrated for the first time. This success is mainly due to the plasma density is high enough to reduce the penetration of neutral gases which cause the charge-exchange energy loss. It is found that an asymmetric RF wave with an azimuthal mode number m= ± 1 is most effective to heat the ions.
