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This division promotes the development and timely introduction of fusion energy as a sustainable energy source with favorable economic, environmental, and safety attributes. The division cooperates with other organizations on common issues of multidisciplinary fusion science and technology, conducts professional meetings, and disseminates technical information in support of these goals. Members focus on the assessment and resolution of critical developmental issues for practical fusion energy applications.
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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.”
Jiro Wakabayashi, Shin-Ichi Tashima, Akio Gofuku
Nuclear Technology | Volume 70 | Number 3 | September 1985 | Pages 343-353
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A15961
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two kinds of identification techniques for the diagnosis of disturbances in nuclear power plants have been proposed, and the applicability of these techniques to actual plants has been verified by computer experiments. In both techniques, a set of the observed signals (observed vector) obtained from an actual plant is identified with one of the categories representing a normal state, several anticipated anomalous situations, and an unanticipated anomalous state, in which the categories corresponding to the anticipated anomalous situations are classified by the kind and approximate magnitude of the anomaly source (the disturbance). The maximum likelihood technique is used in method 1. It applies to the identification of multiple anticipated disturbances that happen sequentially with some time interval, even if a plant has some nonlinear characteristics. The projective operator technique is used in method 2. It applies to the identification of any kind of multiple anticipated disturbances under the conditions of the plant having approximately linear characteristics and the observed vectors corresponding to the anticipated disturbances are linearly independent of each other.