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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
J. M. Davidson, L. O. Gates, and R. E. Nightingale
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 26 | Number 1 | September 1966 | Pages 90-98
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A17191
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Radiation effects were determined in samples of borated graphite used as a neutron shield in the Enrico Fermi Power Plant. The material nominally contained 5 or 7 wt% boron as boron-carbide particles in a nuclear-graphite matrix. The graphite from the center of the graphitizing furnace had a shiny, grey appearance. Microscopy studies showed that the boron carbide had melted and the graphite particles were recrystallized. The remaining material had the usual dull black appearance of nuclear graphite., Most irradiation tests were conducted at 370 and 500°C to a total thermal-neutron dose of 2.5 × 1021 n/cm2 in a predominantly thermal-neutron spectrum. Dimensional changes and other radiation effects were much larger than those in nonborated materials. One grey sample expanded 3.3%, but dimensional changes and other property changes in the black materials were generally less., The radiation effects have been attributed primarily to carbon-atom displacements caused by the energetic lithium and helium atoms in the 10B(n,α)7Li reaction. The faster rate of damage in the grey material is believed to have been due to the finer dispersion of boron in the matrix. This finer dispersion would allow more of the helium and lithium atoms to escape from the boron-carbide particles and produce carbon-atom displacements., Preliminary tests in a neutron spectrum, where the ratio of thermal-to-fast neutrons was less than 1% of that in the flux utilized in the above experiments, produced much smaller changes for comparable fast-neutron doses. This is further evidence that most damage is caused by thermal neutrons.