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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. Breitung
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 108 | Number 1 | May 1991 | Pages 1-15
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE91-A23804
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of the total pressure from irradiated (U,Pu)-mixed oxide were analyzed with respect to the fission product release kinetics and availability for pressure generation in Bethe-Tait excursions. Two pressure sources acting on a millisecond time scale were identified: release of grain boundary fission products (gases and volatiles such as cesium) triggered by grain boundary separation and release of formerly intragranular fission products due to fuel boiling. The former process can provide pressures on a megapascal scale early, and the latter process, late in the accident progression. No fission product release was observed from nonboiling liquid fuel. Based on the experimental data, a model was formulated for the total pressure over irradiated (U,Pu)-oxide. Fuel vapor and gases interact by a suppression mechanism: pIF = max(pAG + pFP, psat). The total pressure over irradiated fuel pIF is equal to the pressure sum from ambient gas pAG and released fission products in the gaseous state pFP when this sum is greater than the saturation vapor pressure of fresh (U,Pu)-oxide psat. In this regime, fuel boiling is suppressed. At sufficiently high temperatures when psat > pAG + pFP, the oxide begins to boil and the total pressure pIF reaches the fresh fuel saturation vapor pressure psat. The switch-over in the controlling mechanism occurred at ∼5200 K.
