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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. A. Koch, B. J. Kozioziemski, J. Salmonson, A. Chernov, L. J. Atherton, E. Dewald, N. Izumi, M. A. Johnson, S. Kucheyev, J. Lugten, E. Mapoles, J. D. Moody, J. W. Pipes, J. D. Sater, D. Stefanescu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 55 | Number 3 | April 2009 | Pages 244-252
Technical Paper | Eighteenth Target Fabrication Specialists' Meeting | doi.org/10.13182/FST08-3455
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Deuterium-tritium (D-T) single-crystal ice layers in spherical shells often form with localized defects that we believe are vapor-etched grain boundary grooves built from dislocations and accommodating slight misorientations between contacting lattice regions. Ignition implosion target requirements limit the cross-sectional areas and total lengths of these grooves, and since they are often the dominant factor in determining layer surface quality, it is important that we be able to characterize their depths, widths, and lengths. We present a variety of ray-tracing and diffraction image modeling results that support our understanding of the profiles of the grooves, which is grounded in X-ray and optical imaging data. We also describe why these data are nevertheless insufficient to adequately determine whether or not a particular layer meets the groove requirements for ignition. We present accumulated data showing the distribution of groove depths, widths, and lengths from a number of layers, and we discuss how these data motivate the adoption of layer rejection criteria in order to ensure that layers that pass these criteria will almost certainly meet the groove requirements. We also describe future improvements that will provide more quantitative information about grooves in D-T ice layers.