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Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
Rose Montgomery, Robert N. Morris, Bruce Bevard, John Scaglione
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 193 | Number 8 | August 2019 | Pages 884-902
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2019.1573602
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The High Burnup Spent Fuel Data Project, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, is focused on understanding the effects of long-term storage and transportation on high burnup (HBU) (>45 GW days per tonne uranium) light water reactor fuel. The project includes 32 HBU spent nuclear fuel (SNF) assemblies (the project assemblies) that are stored in a typical independent spent fuel storage installation (ISFSI) and 25 “sister rods”—9 SNF rods that were removed from the fuel assemblies prior to insertion to the ISFSI and 16 SNF rods removed from similar HBU assemblies. The sister rods provide a baseline of the condition of the HBU rods before loading, drying, and long-term dry storage. The project assemblies will be inspected after 10 years, and the physical state of the stored rods will be compared with the condition of the sister rods to identify any changes in physical properties during the dry storage period. This work focuses on key results from the nondestructive postirradiation examinations of the sister rods and summarizes the results of detailed visual examinations, gamma scans, dimensional measurements, and eddy current liftoff measurements of the combined Chalk River unidentified deposits and oxide layer on the waterside surface of the rod. The data are used to calculate fuel rod and pellet stack growth rates, estimated remaining fuel rod plenum volumes, and the percentage change in fuel rod cladding diameter.