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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.”
V. Mertens, C. Aubanel, O. Gruber, M. Kaufmann, G. Neu, G. Raupp, H. Richter, W. Treutterer, D. Zasche, Th. Zehetbauer, ASDEX Upgrade Team, NBI Team, ICRH Team
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 32 | Number 3 | November 1997 | Pages 459-467
Technical Paper | Plasma Control Issues for Tokamaks | doi.org/10.13182/FST97-A8
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) must run near operational limits to produce high-performance plasmas that, beyond position and shape control, rely on optimized control of additional plasma parameters. Control of single parameters, such as beta, plasma stored energy, or ion cyclotron resonance heating antenna coupling, has already been reported. Further performance improvements can be achieved by coordinated control of combinations of parameters. These may be specific to the different phases of a discharge, e.g., for radiative boundary concepts. A growing understanding of discharge behavior will lead to the identification of better control scenarios involving both new parameters and control methods. This requires a universal platform into which control algorithms can flexibly be integrated to adapt to interesting discharge scenarios. With the multitude of processes expected to be implemented, management of real-time processes becomes crucial. This paper explains how this issue is raised by the requirement specification of the controller and how it influences design, implementation, and operation of the plasma performance controller. Examples such as the achievement of completely detached H-mode plasmas demonstrate the working method and its effectiveness.