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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.”
M. Wykes
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 39-42
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium Processing, Transportation, and Storage | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A875
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The tritium inventory of all the ITER torus cryopumps open to the vacuum vessel has an administrative limit of 120 g, including tritium bound to hydrocarbon compounds formed by combination of fuel gas with carbon plasma-facing components. The total hydrogenic inventory of each of the torus cryopumps has to be less than that resulting in a deflagration pressure of 0.2 MPa (the design pressure of the ITER vacuum vessel of which the torus and neutral beam cryopump pressure boundaries are a part) following a hydrogen-air ignition. Since the neutral beamline fuelling is with protium and deuterium only, these pumps do not significantly contribute to the 120 g tritium limit. The hydrogenic inventories of both the torus and neutral beam cryopumps add to the total for the vacuum vessel following an in-vessel ingress of coolant from a failed water-cooled component, wherein hydrogen is produced from steam reacting with hot metallic dust. There is therefore a large incentive to keep the peak inventories of both the torus and neutral beamline cryopumps as low as practicable. The paper describes the regeneration patterns of the torus and neutral beamline cryopumps that are used to attain this goal while achieving the required vacuum conditions commensurate with the reference ITER pulse scenarios.
