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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.”
Vinod Kumar, D. C. Sahni
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 76 | Number 3 | December 1980 | Pages 282-294
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE80-A21318
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method has been developed to calculate the fundamental mode decay constants in two- and three-dimensional pulsed neutron moderator assemblies using the separable form of the scattering kernel in the transport equation. The method uses the Fourier transform of the integral transport equation and is an extension of the method developed by Sahni to treat monoenergetic criticality problems for two- and three-dimensional geometries. The new kernel of the integral transform equation is factored into components depending on only one of the dimensions of the assembly. This property is further exploited by use of a single Fourier mode approximation in one or more dimensions while the kernels in the remaining dimensions are retained in their respective forms. In our numerical work, three simple forms of the scattering cross section are used for calculating the matrix elements of the relevant equations accurately. Numerical results are presented for the asymptotic decay constant in a one-dimensional slab, a one-dimensional cylinder, two-dimensional infinite rectangular prisms, and three finite cylinders of different height-to-diameter ratios. The relation between the asymptotic decay constant and the geometrical buckling in the transport and diffusion approximations are also calculated for interpreting the results in terms of extrapolation lengths.
