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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.”
D. Rochman, W. Zwermann, S. C. van der Marck, A. J. Koning, H. Sjöstrand, P. Helgesson, B. Krzykacz-Hausmann
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 177 | Number 3 | July 2014 | Pages 337-349
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-32
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new and faster Total Monte Carlo (TMC) method for the propagation of nuclear data uncertainties in Monte Carlo nuclear simulations is presented (the fast TMC method). It addresses the main drawback of the original TMC method, namely, the necessary large time multiplication factor compared to a single calculation. With this new method, Monte Carlo simulations can now be accompanied with an uncertainty propagation (other than statistical), with small additional calculation time. The fast TMC method is presented and compared with the TMC and fast GRS methods for criticality and shielding benchmarks and burnup calculations. Finally, to demonstrate the efficiency of the method, uncertainties due to uncertainties in 235,238U, 239Pu, and thermal scattering nuclear data, for the local deposited power in 12.7 million cells, are calculated for a full-size reactor core.
