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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.”
Musharaf Rabbani, Anthony Busigin, Haiqin Mao, Nisa Halsey, Dayna La Barbera
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | May 2024 | Pages 351-358
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2235179
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In heavy water detritiation using the combined electrolysis and catalytic exchange (CECE) process, deuterium leaving the electrolyzer is fed to the bottom of the liquid-phase catalytic exchange column (LPCE) in which tritium exchanges between the tritiated deuterium gas (moving upward in the LPCE column) and D2O liquid (moving downward in the LPCE column). Once the deuterium gas leaves the LPCE column, typically a trickle bed recombiner (TBR) is used to convert the incoming deuterium gas into the heavy water.
In this study a different approach is presented in which instead of using a TBR, an additional LPCE column is used. In the additional LPCE column, deuterium gas is scrubbed with demineralized light water. This process alternative has many advantages over using a TBR. First, the oxidation of isotopic hydrogen is highly exothermic and requires a separate water-cooling circuit to maintain the temperature within the TBR. Second, a TBR requires a relatively complex internal design to ensure proper distribution of the gas, otherwise catalyst burnup may occur. Using a LPCE column instead of a TBR eliminates these complications. This paper presents a high-level layout of the process plant in which a LPCE column is used instead of a TBR. Column modeling and results are also presented.