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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.”
Paul A. Robinson, Jr., George D. Sauter
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 49 | Number 2 | October 1972 | Pages 117-129
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE72-A35500
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Inverse Compton scattering, wherein a photon gains energy as a result of a reaction with a moving electron, has been studied as a potential energy loss mechanism in the operation of a controlled thermonuclear reactor (CTR). Assuming local thermodynamic equilibrium within a 500-cm-diam plasma at 20 keV we have calculated, for various plasma densities, the influence of inverse Compton scattering on steady-state photon energy leakage via two potential cooling effects: the increased escape probability of the photons generated within the plasma itself, and the negative net energy deposition within the plasma of an incident external photon flux, such as might be generated by the CTR radiation shield through (n,γ) reactions and photon scattering. For currently anticipated CTR plasma densities (1015 ions/cm3), the increase in steady-state photon leakage due to inverse Compton scattering is negligible. For plasma densities of 1019 ions/cm3 or more, the increase is significant (≥10%).
