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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.”
Deokjung Lee
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 174 | Number 3 | July 2013 | Pages 300-317
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE12-27
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The impact of the dynamic condensation of energy groups on the convergence characteristics of the coarse mesh finite difference (CMFD) algorithm has been analyzed within the framework of two-group (2-G) one-node (1-N) local kernel (CMFD1N) and one-group or 2-G global CMFD formulations. Three algorithms were analyzed by the method of linearizing the nonlinear algorithms and applying Fourier analysis to the linearized algorithms: partial current sweep (PCS), CMFD1N, and CMFD1N with dynamic condensation (CMFD1N-DC). Because of the dynamic condensation, the spectral radius of the CMFD1N-DC algorithm is influenced by the other two algorithms; i.e., it shows a similar behavior to the PCS algorithm for small mesh sizes and a similar behavior to the CMFD1N algorithm for large mesh sizes. From the theoretical derivation, it was shown that the spectral radius is determined by the combination of partial current spectrum update in the local PCS kernel and the current correction factor update in the global CMFD. Specifically, the convergence properties of the CMFD1N-DC algorithm follow those of the PCS algorithm for small mesh sizes since the energy spectrum is only updated in the local kernel. It was also observed that the relaxation parameter for the CMFD1N-DC algorithm needs to be determined with the fast group cross-section data because of the dynamic condensation.
