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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.”
T. Muroga, T. Tanaka, M. Kondo, T. Nagasaka, Q. Xu
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 897-901
Test Blanket Modules | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9024
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Combination of liquid lithium with Reduced Activation Feritic/Martensitic Steel (RAFM) is one of the options for Test Blanket Module (TBM) in early ITER period and early DEMO blanket, as well as an intermediate step toward Li/V DEMO blanket. In this paper, characterization of a Li/RAFM blanket was carried out and compared with a Li/V blanket from neutronics and compatibility viewpoints.Although the local Tritium Breeding Ratio (TBR) will be reduced by ∼0.1 by the change from Li/V to Li/RAFM, Li/RAFM seems to be still feasible, with enhanced neutron shield, from the tritium self-sufficiency viewpoint. A similar tritium production rate for the Li/V and the Li/RAFM TBMs suggests that the Li/RAFM TBM simulates well the tritium production of Li/V TBM and thus will be suitable for Li/V DEMO blanket design as well as Li/RAFM blanket.Based on the available data, V-alloys are thought to be highly compatible with Li when the impurity level in the Li is low. New compatibility experiments of RAFM with Li showed transformation of martensitic to ferritic phase in addition to corrosion loss. However, the compatibility issue is estimated to be small for ITER-TBM conditions.The present study showed the significance of starting with a Li/RAFM TBM during the early phase of ITER operation for development of both Li/RAFM and Li/V DEMO blankets.
