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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
Ph. Mertens, S. Brezinsek
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 47 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 161-171
Technical Paper | TEXTOR: Plasma-Wall Interactions | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A697
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The detailed physical mechanisms of hydrogen recycling are not yet completely clear. But, their understanding is required for the correct interpretation of spectroscopic measurements that are intended to provide us routinely with the total particle fluxes as well as with sound extrapolations to fusion devices of the next generation. Thanks to its large observation ports, TEXTOR provides ideal conditions for the combination of optical diagnostics based on completely different techniques, which can be applied simultaneously, with high resolving powers (/ = 2 × 104 to 2 × 105).It is shown how Zeeman spectroscopy on the Balmer-alpha transition (656.1 nm) and laser-induced fluorescence at Lyman-alpha (121.5 nm) both point to the presence of a substantial amount of cold hydrogen atoms (with kinetic energy <1 eV) in front of plasma-facing components, which is a phenomenon that, surprisingly, is largely independent of the local plasma parameters. This has led to a strong development of the spectroscopy of hydrogen molecules (Fulcher band), which may be a dominant source of atomic hydrogen in the plasma edge, and, as a final result, to an explanation for the phenomenological correction applied to the inverse photon efficiencies S/XB that are commonly used in the conversion of the photon fluxes into particle fluxes.