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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
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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.”
T. Ozawa, T. Abe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 152 | Number 1 | January 2006 | Pages 37-47
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2561
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In order to improve fast reactor performance, optimization of the design margin is required. Consequently, a probabilistic method for fuel rod design is being considered, and the Baysian Oriented Fuel Rod Performance Evaluation (BORNFREE) probabilistic code, which computed the statistical responses of several performance parameters concerning fuel rod integrity, was developed. The probability that the performance parameter exceeds the criterion and the design margin can be quantitatively estimated by using this code. In this study, uncertainties that affect the cladding stress, which is one of the performance parameters that restricts the lifetime of a fuel rod, were statistically simulated, and the probabilistic results were compared with the deterministic results of the conventional method. As a result of the trial computation, it was confirmed that the deterministic results were adequately conservative and exceeded the 3 upper level of the probabilistic results for any case. Furthermore, the deterministic results showed significant overestimation as compared with the probabilistic results. Consequently, it is suggested that the probabilistic method is a feasible option to optimize the design evaluation to expand the lifetime of a fuel rod.
