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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
Simon Niemes, James Robert Braun
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 80 | Number 3 | May 2024 | Pages 558-562
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2023.2209087
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Accurate gas samples containing tritiated molecules are essential for the development of tritium monitoring tools and to study tritium-induced reaction dynamics. We prepared gas samples that may contain any of the six hydrogen isotopologues by manometrically mixing high-purity homonuclear isotopologues and forming the remaining isotopologues by chemical equilibration. In order to independently verify the relative isotopologue concentrations to the manometrically derived composition and thus validate the accuracy of the produced gas samples, we measured the effective speed of sound (SoS) in the gas mixtures, which are highly sensitive to small deviations in the relative molar fractions due to the large difference in the individual SoSs. We found that deviations between the manometrically derived and measured SoSs are on a 0.1% level, demonstrating the accuracy of the sample production procedure and the suitability of SoS measurements for inline composition monitoring in tritium applications.