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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.”
Sherif S. Nafee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 172 | Number 2 | November 2010 | Pages 211-219
Technical Paper | Radiation Measurements and Instrumentation | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A10906
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The calibration of gamma-ray cylindrical detectors is often required in the analysis of high or low environmental samples and the homogenously distributive nuclear waste drums. Therefore, a new analytical simulation method is proposed in the present work to calculate the full-energy peak efficiencies of high-purity germanium cylindrical detectors using extended sources of low and high volumes. The sources were mounted at three different positions with respect to the detector's axis (coaxial, parallel, and perpendicular), labeled as Position 1, Position 2, and Position 3, respectively. The self-attenuation and the coincidence summing effects at low source-detector distance are also included in the algorithm. A remarkable agreement between the measured and the calculated efficiencies is achieved with discrepancies <4% for the first two positions and between 5 and 7% for the last one.