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ANS Student Conference 2025
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Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
Benjamin M. Ma, Glenn Murphy
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 20 | Number 4 | December 1964 | Pages 536-546
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE64-A20997
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The strain and stress distributions resulting from the combined effects of radiation, creep, and neutron flux levels in long externally and internally cooled tubular reactor fuel elements are determined analytically. Primary effects of thermal-cycling growth, irradiation growth, swelling, and creep of the fuel materials under operating conditions of power reactors are taken into consideration. An exact solution of the modified Bessel functions and an approximate solution (using a parabolic function) for neutron flux distribution are obtained from the simple diffusion equations. From the relation that the rate of heat generation is proportional to the neutron flux, the rate of volumetric heat generation in the fuel is found. Then the temperature distribution in the fuel is determined by using Poisson's equation of heat conduction. The equations of the displacement-strain relations, compatibility, incompressibility, stress equilibrium, yield criterion, and boundary conditions are established from some basic assumptions. The strain and stress equations for the fuel elements are derived. From the calculated results of a numerical example, the neutron flux levels, thermal and radiation dilatation, irradiation creep, thickness, and properties of the cladding material are found to have significant influences on the strain and stress distributions produced in the fuel element.