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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.”
Y. Nakao, N. Senmyo, N. Nakamura, H. Matsuura, T. Johzaki, V. T. Voronchev
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 1 | July 2009 | Pages 391-394
IFE Target Design | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 1) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A8932
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method to diagnose the degree of electron degeneracy in compressed fuel for fast-ignition inertial confinement fusion is proposed. We focus on 4.44-MeV -rays emitted in the reaction 9Be(,n)12C governed by fusion-produced energetic alpha-particles in a laser-imploded DT fuel pellet admixed with a small amount of 9B. In this case the compressed fuel pellet is not subjected to any heating laser pulse. We have evaluated the probability P-Be that the + 9Be reaction occurs during the slowing down of -particle. It is found that the reaction probability depends strongly on the degeneracy parameter , which is defined as the ratio of electron temperature to the Fermi energy. We show the possibility of diagnosing the electron degeneracy from the P-Be - diagram by detecting the 4.44-MeV -quanta and DT neutrons emitted from the dense core plasma.
