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Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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.”
W. S. Winters, Jr., H. Merte, Jr.
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 69 | Number 3 | March 1979 | Pages 411-429
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE79-A19959
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Phase equilibrium blowdown models are not valid for geometries having small characteristic lengths (volume-to-break-area ratios). For such geometries, the two-phase expansion is too rapid to permit adequate heat and mass transfer between liquid and vapor to maintain phase equilibrium. The two-phase expansions observed during the present pipe blowdown experiments with dichlorodifluoromethane (R-12) were found to exhibit pronounced nonequilibrium behavior. Decompression transients were characterized by a rapid drop in pressure from the initial value to levels well below the initial saturation pressure. The pressure recovery caused by delayed growth of the vapor in superheated liquid leveled off to pressure plateaus well below the initial saturation pressure. Long-term blowdown transients were not affected by the initial pressure level, but initial temperature and pipe geometry were observed to have a pronounced influence. Higher initial temperatures resulted in higher pressure plateaus and shorter blowdown times. The rapid phase expansions occurring in pipe geometries having small volume-to-break-area ratios resulted in greater departures from phase equilibrium, as evidenced by the lower pressure plateaus observed experimentally. Transient temperature measurements indicated substantial temperature differences between liquid and vapor during blowdown. Furthermore, the vapor was observed to be saturated with respect to the system pressure for most of the blowdown event. To describe this experimentally observed nonequilibrium behavior, a model was formulated that treats the expanding two-phase fluid as a pseudo-homogeneous mixture of uniformly distributed, heat transfer dominated, spherical vapor bubbles surrounded by superheated liquid. By adjusting two empirical parameters—discharge coefficient, Cd, and bubble density, N—to permit the model to simulate R-12 blowdown from one particular blowdown geometry and set of initial conditions, it was possible to use the model in predicting R-12 blowdown transients for other geometries and initial conditions as well as for pipe water blowdown. The nonequilibrium model predictions were considerably more accurate than those of the phase equilibrium model, although consistent discrepancies were observed in all model-data comparisons. It is believed that two-dimensional effects near the pipe exit, liquid inertia influences on bubble growth, and limitations in the choked flow model are primarily responsible for the discrepancies.