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The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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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.”
John C. Fisher
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 34 | Number 1 | August 1998 | Pages 66-75
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST98-A53
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear energy levels are characterized in part by their isospin quantum numbers. Ordinary nuclides are well described by an independent-particle model with ground-state isospins equal to the minimum possible value Tmin = abs(A/2 - Z). It has been suggested that extremely neutron rich nuclei constitute a second branch of the table of isotopes whose ground states have the maximum possible isospin Tmax = A/2 and that neutral members of the Tmax branch (i.e., polyneutrons) serve as mediating particles for the new class of nuclear reactions discovered by Fleischmann and Pons. The energetics of the new reactions have been qualitatively described by a liquid-drop model. Recent measurements of the mass spectrum of reaction products produced in the new reactions make possible a refinement of the model, providing an explanation for gaps of instability separating ranges of stability in the mass spectrum.
