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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.”
Sara A. Pozzi, Imre Pázsit
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 154 | Number 3 | November 2006 | Pages 367-373
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2639
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a recent paper, a simple analytical model to describe the statistics of the number of scattering collisions undergone by fast neutrons as they slow down until they are absorbed was presented. In that study, it was assumed that the moderator was infinite and homogeneous and accounted for scattering and absorption by a single nuclear species. In the present paper, that methodology is extended to the more realistic case of neutron slowing down in a homogeneous mixture. The formulas are derived and evaluated numerically, and the results are found to be in very good agreement with corresponding Monte Carlo simulations. The average value of the number of collisions that a neutron undergoes before being captured is computed. The results for a capture-gated detector composed of hydrogen, carbon, and boron are discussed.
