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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.”
Xiaoyu Hu, Yousry Y. Azmy
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 195 | Number 6 | June 2021 | Pages 598-613
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2020.1860634
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To determine the angular discretization error asymptotic convergence rate of the uncollided scalar flux computed with the discrete ordinates (S) method, a comprehensive theory of the regularity order with respect to the azimuthal angle of the exact pointwise SN uncollided angular flux is derived based on the integral form of the transport equation in two-dimensional Cartesian geometry. With this theory, the regularity order of the pointwise uncollided angular flux can be estimated for a given problem configuration. Our new theory inspired a novel Modified Simpson’s (MS) quadrature that converges the uncollided scalar flux faster than any of the traditional quadratures by avoiding integration across points of irregularity in the azimuthal angle. Numerical results successfully verify our new theory in four variants of a test configuration, and the angular discretization errors in the corresponding scalar flux computed with conventional angular quadrature types and with our new quadrature types are found to converge with different orders. The error convergence rates obtained with traditional quadrature types are limited by the regularity order of the exact angular flux and the quadrature’s integration intervals while our new MS quadrature types converge with order two to four times higher than traditional quadratures. A detailed study of oscillations observed in certain quadrature errors is provided by introducing the effective length of the irregular interval and the associated oscillating function.