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Operations & Power
Members focus on the dissemination of knowledge and information in the area of power reactors with particular application to the production of electric power and process heat. The division sponsors meetings on the coverage of applied nuclear science and engineering as related to power plants, non-power reactors, and other nuclear facilities. It encourages and assists with the dissemination of knowledge pertinent to the safe and efficient operation of nuclear facilities through professional staff development, information exchange, and supporting the generation of viable solutions to current issues.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
Jagdeep B. Doshi, Lawrence M. Grossman
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 65 | Number 1 | January 1978 | Pages 106-129
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE78-A27130
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method of analysis is developed for nuclear reactor accident initiating events that are localized in space. The method is based on a flux factorization technique, accounting for the flux shape changes taking place near the region of perturbation. In the steady state, the neutron shape functions are expanded in a series of eigenfunctions of the steady-state group removal operator. During the unsteady state, the time-dependent group shape functions are expanded in a series of the same stationary eigenfunctions with time-dependent Fourier coefficients. An auxiliary function is added to this expansion to take account of the spatial variation of the spectral hardening of neutrons in the immediate vicinity of the disturbed region. From the resulting representation of the group shape functions, the equations to be satisfied by the time-dependent Fourier coefficients and the time-dependent auxiliary shape function due to the disturbed region are developed consistently. A typical large [1000-MW(e)] liquid-metal fast breeder reactor with two radial core zones of different enrichments is analyzed by the above method. The transient initiating perturbation is taken to be a specified rate of coolant voiding from a single subassembly in the reactor core. The results show a strong dependence of the reactivity added on the radial location of the voiding perturbation and on the rate of voiding.