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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.”
Clifford E. Singer, Hermann von Brevern
Nuclear Technology | Volume 176 | Number 2 | November 2011 | Pages 227-237
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-A13298
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Formulas are given for extrapolating uranium prices that could result from future trajectories for the cumulative use of native uranium. The logarithm of the extrapolated price is given by a monotonically increasing trend curve plus a sinusoidal oscillation calibrated to historical data. The trend curve as a function of cumulative extraction of native uranium accounts both for accessing lower ore grades and for exploiting more-difficult-to-access richer ores as the more easily accessed richer ores are depleted. Accounting for both of these effects, the logarithm of the monotonic price trend is linear in the logarithm of cumulative extraction of native uranium, with least variance between observations and data of a power-law slope of 1/4.5 up to the point where a limit on the accessibility of the remaining highest-grade ores is reached. (However, a slope of 1/5.6 gives an almost equally good fit.) As an example, a ratio 4 of maximum depth of other mines to maximum depth of current uranium mines is used as a measure of the accessibility limit. This limit is first reached when the background trend curve uranium price reaches $143/kg of elemental uranium, in U.S. dollars inflation adjusted to year 2007 prices ($US2007). Thereafter, the accessibility limit gradually reduces the cumulative amount of native uranium extracted at a given cost below that computed from the power law, multiplying it by a factor of 0.59 when the trend price reaches 300 $US2007/kg. Increases of nuclear energy produced per kilogram of uranium mined with increasing uranium costs are also accounted for. A fraction of global nuclear energy users can develop a higher nuclear energy production rate per kilogram of mined uranium, e.g., by reusing the fissile material in spent fuel. Resulting cumulative cost changes as a function of cumulative nuclear energy use are presented in graphical and tabular form for a variety of input parameters.