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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. Sugiyama, Y. Asakura, T. Uda, K. Kotoh
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 48 | Number 1 | July-August 2005 | Pages 163-166
Technical Paper | Tritium Science and Technology - Tritium Science and Technology - Detritiation, Purification, and Isotope Separation | doi.org/10.13182/FST05-A904
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
At the National Institute for Fusion Science experimental studies on hydrogen isotope separation by a cryogenic Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) process have been carried out in order to apply it to the system of vacuum pumping-gas treatment for the D-D burning experiments of the Large Helical Device. Breakthrough behavior of D2 in a H2-D2 mixture flowing through a synthetic zeolite 5A-type packed-bed column at 77.4 K is examined by using a cryogenic PSA apparatus. The test column used is 40 mm inner diameter. It is filled with spherical adsorbent particles of 2 mm at an amount of 700 g on a dry basis. The hydrogen mixture including D2 at a concentration of 1 % is used in this experiment. The breakthrough curves obtained by the experiments are accurately simulated by theoretical curves calculated for the system exhibiting the Henry type adsorption. Overall effective mass transfer coefficients are obtained from the comparison of experimental curves with analytical ones. The coefficients increase monotonously with superficial velocity. The sequential operations of PSA, such as adsorption, desorption and pressurization is carried out for several times. It is confirmed that breakthrough curves are reproducible after several repetitions of operation.
