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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.”
Tsung-Kuang Yeh, Mei-Ya Wang
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 173 | Number 2 | February 2013 | Pages 163-171
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE11-85
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The coolant in a boiling water reactor (BWR) during a cold shutdown usually contains a relatively high level of dissolved oxygen from intrusion of atmospheric air. Accordingly, the structural materials in the primary coolant circuit (PCC) of a BWR could be exposed to a strongly oxidizing environment for a short period of time during a subsequent startup operation. Because there are limited measurable water chemistry data, a well-developed computer code DEMACE was used in the current study to investigate the variations in redox species concentration and in electrochemical corrosion potential (ECP) of components in the PCC of a domestic BWR during startup operations. Our analyses indicated that the dissolved hydrogen level in the reactor coolant at a low power level without steam generation in the core was lower than that at a power level with a minor amount of steam generated in the core. The dissolved oxygen concentrations in the reactor coolant were relatively high and were >500 ppb during startup operations at power levels >2.5%. In the meantime, the concentrations of hydrogen peroxide could be >500 ppb at the core outlet region during startup operations, which renders a strongly oxidizing coolant environment in the entire PCC. The ECPs of structural components in the PCC of the analyzed BWR generally followed the concentration trend of hydrogen peroxide. It was predicted that the coolant environment in a BWR during a plant startup could be highly oxidizing, and the structural components would therefore suffer from a more serious corrosion problem than under operations at the rated power level.