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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.”
Steve Kahn, Randall Harman, Vernon Forgue
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 23 | Number 1 | September 1965 | Pages 8-20
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A19254
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Energy spectra were obtained experimentally for fission fragments escaping from backed films of enriched uranium dioxide that were less than 11 µm thick. The data were reduced to give values for the relative average escape energies (R), escape fractions (S) and energy deposition efficiencies (D). A mathematical model was developed to synthesize these results using a Monte-Carlo-type computer code. This code included the fission-fragment masses, yields, and initial energies, the experimental source-detector geometry, a range-energy relationship, an energy-loss relationship and a function for the pulse-height defect in surface-barrier detectors. Various functions for these last three parameters were used in combination to obtain results that duplicated the experimental spectra and R, S and D values. The agreement was obtained with range proportional to (energy)1/2, the square energy-loss function, and pulse-height defect = A (E) (M-B), where A and B are constants and E and M are energy and mass, respectively. The experimental detection functions were removed from the code, and the spectra and R, S and D values were calculated for a 2π geometry. These values agreed well with those calculated using weighted averages for range and initial energy.