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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.”
J. Ongena, A. M. Messiaen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 45 | Number 2 | March 2004 | Pages 453-466
Technical Paper | Plasma and Fusion Energy Physics - Present Status and Future | doi.org/10.13182/FST04-A512
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The total amount of heating power coupled to the plasma Ptot and the energy confinement time are determining parameters for realizing the plasma conditions suitable for the reactor. We recall that the ignition condition can be expressed by the following condition on the triple fusion product:NT = Ptot2/(3 Vol) = 3N2T2Vol/Ptot > (NT)ignition (1)with T [approximately equal to] 15 keVwhere = E/Ptot is the energy confinement time, E = 3NT Vol for an isothermal plasma with Ti = Te = T and a plasma volume Vol; N is the plasma density. The value T [approximately equal to] 15 keV corresponds to the minimum value of (NT)ignition as a function T (see Fig. 1). In the present discussion for the sake of simplicity, we neglect density and temperature profile factors. The heating power in most of the present experiments is given by Ptot = POH + Padd where POH is the ohmic power and Padd is the additional heating due to neutral beam injection or R.F. heating. At ignition, the additional heating power must come completely from the energetic particles produced by the fusion reactions and we must have Ptot = P if we neglect the residual POH and the plasma losses by Bremsstrahlung (PBr [is proportional to] N2 T1/2).