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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.”
Alex Galperin, Meir Segev, Anatoly Goldfeld, Yonathan Karni
Nuclear Technology | Volume 70 | Number 3 | September 1985 | Pages 354-363
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A15962
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The independently developed and verified computational system BGUCORE for the neutronic analysis of pressurized water reactor cores is introduced. The basic methodology adopted generates cross-section libraries for each fuel type as functions of burnup and soluble boron concentrations. These cross sections are arranged as a two-dimensional matrix of sets, each set corresponding to a particular burnup/boron pair of coordinates. The two-dimensional diffusion analysis of the reactor core utilizes the pregenerated libraries by interpolating between burnup and boron entry points. The present system is especially designed for the analysis of cores with burnable poisons. Such cores are characterized by strong heterogeneity and selfshielding effects. Detailed benchmark calculations, performed for cycle 1 of the Zion 2 power station, validate the performance of the BGUCORE system. Further development of the system, aimed at creating a comprehensive design and fuel cycle analysis tool, includes a three-dimensional representation of the core and thermohydraulic modules.
