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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.”
N. K . Ganguly, F. C. Cobb, A. W. Waltner
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 17 | Number 2 | October 1963 | Pages 223-226
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE63-A28883
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Measurements of the diffusion parameters of heavy water were made using a 1 Mev Van de Graaff accelerator utilizing the Be9(d, n) reaction under pulsed operation. The measurements were made at temperatures of 10°, 20°, 31°, 40°, and 50°C for buckling values ranging from 0.063 cm−2 to 0.100 cm−2. The decay of the neutron density was measured by a BF3 counter, located under the moderator container, in conjunction with a 26-channel time analyzer. The meanlife for each buckling was computed using Peierls' method; and values of the diffusion parameters were computed by the method of least squares. The value of the diffusion constant, (2.00 ± 0.04) × 105 cm2/sec at 10°C, agreed within the limits of experimental error with that found by Raievski and Horowitz, who used the modulated source method. The coefficient of the B4 term, usually referred to as the diffusion cooling coefficient, was found to be (3.72 ± 0.50) × 105 cm4/ sec as compared with (3.5 ± 0.8) × 105 cm4/sec as reported by Sjostrand in 1959.