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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.”
Ik Kyu Park, Jong Hwan Kim, Seong Wan Hong
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 176 | Number 3 | March 2014 | Pages 255-272
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-16
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Heat losses, heat remnants, and solidified layer thickness were calculated using a single-sphere film-boiling model. Debris particles of the quenched TROI (Test for Real cOrium Interaction with water) experiments were the target of analyses. The single-sphere film-boiling model can provide the order of triggerability and exponential potential at fuel-coolant interactions of various melt materials. For the triggerability, a system with a small particle size and large thermal conductivity induces a larger heat loss and a more voided mixture, which means a less triggered system. The explosion potentials are dependent not upon the triggerability but upon the heat contents of the mixture melt particles that can participate in a steam explosion. The calculated solidified layer thickness ratio to the radius of the melt particle, defined as a fragility factor of a melt particle in this paper, also maintained consistency with the order of triggerability and was evaluated by the heat loss. The breakup sizes for various melt materials were analyzed with several types of breakup models. A dynamic breakup model to deal with transient velocities can explain the different breakup sizes of various melt materials.