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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. A. Shapiro, E. J. Kowalski, J. R. Sirigiri, D. S. Tax, R. J. Temkin, T. S. Bigelow, J. B. Caughman, D. A. Rasmussen
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 57 | Number 3 | April 2010 | Pages 196-207
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/FST10-A9467
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The ITER electron cyclotron heating (ECH) transmission lines (TLs) are 63.5-mm-diam corrugated waveguides that will each carry 1 MW of power at 170 GHz. The TL is defined here as the corrugated waveguide system connecting the gyrotron mirror optics unit (MOU) to the entrance of the ECH launcher and includes miter bends and other corrugated waveguide components. The losses on the ITER TL have been calculated for four possible cases corresponding to having HE11 mode purity at the input of the TL of 100, 97, 90, and 80%. The losses due to coupling, ohmic, and mode conversion loss are evaluated in detail using a numerical code and analytical approaches. Estimates of the calorimetric loss on the line show that the output power is reduced by about 5, ±1% because of ohmic loss in each of the four cases. Estimates of the mode conversion loss show that the fraction of output power in the HE11 mode is [approximately]3% smaller than the fraction of input power in the HE11 mode. High output mode purity therefore can be achieved only with significantly higher input mode purity. Combining both ohmic and mode conversion loss, the efficiency of the TL from the gyrotron MOU to the ECH launcher can be roughly estimated in theory as 92% times the fraction of input power in the HE11 mode.
