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Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.”
Amos Norman, P. Spiegler
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 16 | Number 2 | June 1963 | Pages 213-217
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE63-A26502
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A charged particle passing through water creates a thermal spike, a region of high temperature along the track. The thermal spike expands explosively, thus producing a pressure wave, and then breaks up because of surface tension into discrete regions of water vapor and hydrogen gas. These vapor-gas microbubbles can act as nucleation centers in superheated or gas supersaturated solutions. Calculations based on this thermal spike model are presented of the total energy and minimum linear energy transfer (LET) required to form nucleation centers of a given size, and the calculations are compared to published data on the radiation nucleation of superheated and supersaturated aqueous solutions. Calculations are also presented of the pressure created by the rapid expansion of the thermal spike, and of the lifetime of the vapor-gas microbubbles under conditions in which they collapse. The calculations cover an LET range of 0.1 to 10 Mev/µ or, approximately, from the maximum LET of recoil protons in water to the maximum LET of fission fragments in water. The calculations are carried out for a liquid pressure of one atmosphere and two temperature conditions : the minimum temperature at which vapor nuclei of given size will grow and 0°C. The effect of high pressures and temperatures on the radiation nucleation of vapor bubbles is discussed briefly in terms of the foam limit.