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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.”
Ivan Kodeli, Luka Snoj
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 171 | Number 3 | July 2012 | Pages 231-238
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-62
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To validate new nuclear cross-section evaluations and computational methods, a large number of benchmark experiments were performed in the past. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) launched several projects aiming to collect, preserve, and disseminate the benchmark data in a user-friendly format. Reactor physics benchmarks are covered by the International Reactor Physics Experiments (IRPhE) project. This paper presents the preparation of the IRPhE compilation for the KRITZ-2 critical experiments, consisting of altogether six configurations, both UO2 and mixed oxide, measured at two different temperatures at Studsvik. These configurations were selected for the purpose of the OECD/NEA uncertainty analysis in modeling benchmark activities. Uncertainties due to input data uncertainties, modeling errors, and numerical approximations were studied, with particular emphasis on the uncertainties in the nuclear cross-section data. The SUSD3D sensitivity-uncertainty code with the SCALE-6.0, JENDL-4, and/or JENDL-3.2 covariance data were used in this study. The consistency among the calculated-to-experiment values and the overall computational uncertainties is discussed.