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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.”
A. Moisseytsev, Y. Tang, S. Majumdar, C. Grandy, K. Natesan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 175 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 468-479
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A12318
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To improve the economic characteristics of fast reactors, researchers are developing advanced structural materials for application to reactor components. These advanced materials provide higher strength at elevated temperatures. Coupled thermal-hydraulic and structural analyses have been carried out to investigate the benefits of the advanced structural materials for a specific fast reactor design: the Advanced Burner Reactor (ABR) developed at Argonne National Laboratory. The benefits of the advanced materials, in terms of increased design margins, possible longer lifetime, thinner structures, and higher operating temperatures, were calculated for the major ABR structural components, including the reactor vessel, the core support structure, the intermediate heat exchanger, the intermediate heat transport system piping, and the steam generator. For each structure, the possible reduction in the component thickness was calculated and was converted into estimates of the commodities savings provided by the use of the advanced materials. Overall, a significant material mass saving of [approximately]40% was calculated for the considered fast reactor structures.