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The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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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.”
Akio Yamamoto, Masahiro Tatsumi, Naoki Sugimura
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 163 | Number 2 | October 2009 | Pages 144-151
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE08-80
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new burnup calculation method, called the projected predictor-corrector (PPC) method, is proposed. In comparison with the conventional predictor-corrector (PC) method, a larger time-step size can be used in burnup calculation without losing calculational accuracy. The PPC method is especially useful for Gd-bearing fuel assemblies, for which a fine time step size is necessary in burnup calculations. The PPC method utilizes a correlation between the number density and the reaction rate in each burnable nuclide and improves the accuracy of the microscopic reaction rate in the corrector step by estimating the “projected” reaction rate. The additional computation time for the PPC method is negligible. Verification calculations are performed for 17 × 17 pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies with 16 Gd-bearing fuel rods. The content of Gd in Gd-bearing fuel rods is set to be 2 to 10 wt%. The calculation results indicate that the PPC method shows comparable accuracy to conventional PC methods whose step time size is about half; i.e., the number of burnup steps in the PPC method can be reduced to about half of that in the conventional PC method.
