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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.”
F.-J. Hambsch, I. Ruskov
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 163 | Number 1 | September 2009 | Pages 1-16
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE09-1
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 10B(n,0)7Li and 10B(n,1)7Li angular distributions have been measured at the Geel Electron Linear Accelerator time-of-flight spectrometer in the incident neutron energy range from 0.1 keV to 1 MeV. A twin Frisch-grid ionization chamber has been used with two very thin 94% 10B-enriched samples mounted back-to-back on the common cathode. With this type of charged-particle detector, it is possible to measure the angular distribution of the alpha particles in a nearly 2x2 solid angle, with a clear separation of the alpha-particle yields from both reaction channels: -emission to the 7Li ground state {0} and to its first excited state {1}. Hence, for the first time nearly the full solid angle at all incident neutron energies investigated has been covered. A strong angular anisotropy was observed and is discussed in the frame of the compound nucleus reaction mechanism. The alpha-particle center-of-mass angular distributions have been used to calculate the branching ratio 10B(n,0)/10B(n,1). Both data sets had a strong impact at the International Atomic Energy Agency Coordinated Research Project “Improvement of the Standard Cross Sections for Light Elements” and the corresponding evaluation of the standards data file for this reaction.