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ANS Student Conference 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.”
Seref Okuducu, Erhan Eser, Savas Sönmezoglu
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 154 | Number 3 | November 2006 | Pages 374-381
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2640
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Nuclear level density plays an important role in estimation of nuclear reaction rates, statistical calculations of astrophysics, spallations neutrons measurements, and studies of intermediate-energy heavy-ion collisions. In particular, level densities have been used successfully in calculation of the neutron-capture cross-section basic data required for both design and nuclear model calculations in nuclear science and technologies.In this study the nuclear level density based on nuclear low-lying collective level bands at excitations near neutron binding energy is analyzed in terms of collective excitation modes. The nuclear level-density parameters of some large deformed odd-A and odd-odd nuclei in the region of rare earth elements have been calculated by considering different excitation bands of observed nuclear spectra. The method used assumes equidistant spacing of the collective coupled state bands of nuclei considered. The values of calculated nuclear level-density parameters have been compared with those of the compiled values for s-wave neutron resonance data.