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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.”
Bret Patrick van den Akker, Joonhong Ahn
Nuclear Technology | Volume 181 | Number 3 | March 2013 | Pages 408-426
Technical Papers | Fission Reactors/Fuel Cycle and Management/Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT11-103
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper presents a deterministic performance assessment for spent fuel from deep-burn modular high-temperature reactors (DBMHRs) in the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. Typical DBMHR designs utilize fuel elements manufactured from graphite. The fuel itself is made of TRISO particles containing the fissile material. The performance of the DBMHR spent fuel (DBSF) was evaluated in terms of the annual dose to the reasonably maximally exposed individual (RMEI) under various hydrogeological conditions. Part of this evaluation was an analysis of the graphite waste matrix and of the TRISO particles under repository conditions, the result of which indicates that the lifetime of the graphite matrix greatly exceeds that of the TRISO particles and that it is the graphite, not the TRISO particles, that serves to sequester the radionuclides within the fuel matrix. Under all 14 cases considered, DBSF is seen to comply with the annual dose standards set in Part 197 of Title 40 of the Code of Federal Regulations, for exposure via groundwater contamination under current climatic conditions. Parametric studies for the effect of waste matrix lifetime on annual dose received by the RMEI indicate that repository performance is sensitively linked to waste matrix durability because most radionuclides including actinides are likely to be released congruently with the graphite matrix.
