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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
V. Tiwari, T. F. Abbink, J. A. Ocádiz Flores, J. L. Flèche, C. Gueneau, S. Chatain, A. L. Smith, J. Martinet, C. Venard
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 197 | Number 12 | December 2023 | Pages 3035-3057
YMSR Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2023.2223745
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A thorough understanding of the corrosion chemistry between molten salt fuel and structural materials (e.g., steel) is key for the advancement of Molten Salt Reactor technology. In this work, we consider more specifically the case of a chloride fuel salt mixture and the thermochemistry of a salt mixture such as (NaCl-MgCl2-PuCl3) in interaction with (Fe, Cr, Ni). The present work aims at the development of a thermodynamic model of the key subsystems NaCl-CrCl2, NaCl-CrCl3, and FeCl2-CrCl2 to predict corrosion products that may form between molten salt and structural materials. The Modified Quasichemical Model in the quadruplet approximation is used to describe the Gibbs energy of the liquid phase. A critical review of the existing phase diagram and thermodynamic data on theses systems is first presented. To alleviate the lack of data, ab initio calculations coupled with a quasi-harmonic approach are performed to estimate the thermodynamic properties for the intermediate solid compounds Na2CrCl4 and Na3CrCl6, which exist in the NaCl-CrCl2 and NaCl-CrCl3 systems, respectively. These atomistic simulation data together with selected experimental data are then used as input for the thermodynamic assessment of the three subsystems.