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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.”
L. Heilbronn, C. J. Zeitlin, Y. Iwata, T. Murakami, T. Nakamura, S. Yonai, R. M. Ronningen, H. Iwase
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 169 | Number 3 | November 2011 | Pages 279-289
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE10-112
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Double-differential neutron yields from 400 MeV/nucleon 56Fe stopping in C, Al, Cu, and Pb targets are reported, along with Particle and Heavy Ion Transport Code System (PHITS) transport model calculations of the data. The yields were measured at 90, 120, and 160 deg in all four systems. Neutron energies were measured from 1 to 2 MeV up to a few hundred mega-electron-volts. The data augment previous measurements made by Kurosawa et al. that were reported for angles between 0 and 90 deg. The measurements for each target were made at two different target orientations, resulting in two different thicknesses of target that neutrons had to traverse before reaching the neutron detectors. The differences in the spectra between two different target orientations are due to neutron transport through the target and as such provide an interesting test of transport model calculations. The data indicate that PHITS reproduces the effects of neutron transport very well but may overestimate neutron production between energies of 10 to 50 MeV in some cases.