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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.”
Aaron M. Phillippe, James E. Banfield, Kevin T. Clarno, Larry J. Ott, Bobby Philip, Mark A. Berrill, Rahul S. Sampath, Srikanth Allu, Steven P. Hamilton
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 178 | Number 2 | October 2014 | Pages 172-185
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE13-19
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The IFA-597 (Integrated Fuel Assessment) experiments from the International Fuel Performance Experiments database were designed to study the thermal behavior of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel and the effects of an annulus on fission gas release in light water reactor fuel. An evaluation of nuclear fuel pin heat transfer in the FRAPCON-3.4 and Exnihilo codes for MOX fuel systems was performed, with a focus on the first 20 time steps (∼6 GWd/tonne initial heavy metal) for explicit comparison between the codes. In addition, sensitivity studies were performed to evaluate the effect of the radial power shape and approximations to the geometry to account for the thermocouple hole, dish, and chamfer. The analysis demonstrated relative agreement for both solid (rod 1) and annular (rod 2) fuel in the experiment, demonstrating the accuracy of the codes and their underlying material models for MOX fuel, while also revealing a small energy loss artifact in how gap conductance is currently handled in Exnihilo for chamfered fuel pellets. The within-pellet power shape was shown to impact the predicted centerline temperatures significantly. This has provided an initial benchmarking of the pin heat transfer capability of Exnihilo for MOX fuel with respect to a well-validated nuclear fuel performance code. This analysis was done for a heavy-water boiling water reactor, but the conclusions are not limited by the reactor type beyond the spectrum and particular materials.