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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.”
P. K. Sarkar, M. A. Prasad
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 87 | Number 2 | June 1984 | Pages 136-151
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE84-A17708
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Based on the theory of contributions, a new Monte Carlo method known as the contributon Monte Carlo method has recently been developed. The method has found applications in several practical shielding problems. We analyze theoretically the variance and efficiency of the new method, by taking moments around the score. In order to compare the contributon game with a game of simple geometrical splitting and also to get the optimal placement of the contributon volume, the moments equations were solved numerically for a one-dimensional, one-group problem using a 10-mfp-thick homogeneous slab. It is found that the optimal placement of the contributon volume is adjacent to the detector; even at its most optimal the contributon Monte Carlo is less efficient than geometrical splitting.
