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Fuel Cycle & Waste Management
Devoted to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including waste management, worldwide. Division specific areas of interest and involvement include uranium conversion and enrichment; fuel fabrication, management (in-core and ex-core) and recycle; transportation; safeguards; high-level, low-level and mixed waste management and disposal; public policy and program management; decontamination and decommissioning environmental restoration; and excess weapons materials disposition.
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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.”
E. A. Grimm
Nuclear Technology | Volume 43 | Number 2 | April 1979 | Pages 146-154
Technical Paper | The Back End of the Light Water Reactor Fuel Cycle / Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT79-A16306
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
General Electric (GE) experience in operation of the Morris spent fuel storage facility, which now contains over 300 Mg of both boiling water reactor (BWR) and pressurized water reactor spent fuel, confirms that receipt, handling, and storage of spent fuel can be accomplished safely with negligible impact on the environment or the operation itself. Basin water treatment is accomplished with disposable powdered resins applied to a precoated filter-demineralizer unit, and special applications of Zeolites aid in maintaining radiocobalt and radiocesium concentrations to <4 × 10−4 μCi/ml in the basin water. No gaseous radioisotopes from damaged or leaking fuel have been observed, and no significant increases in radioactivity or loss of cladding integrity have been observed during fuel handling and storage. GE has utilized this experience to design an expansion of the Morris basin and to design Boral-poisoned, high-density, stainless-steel storage modules for BWR reactor pools. These free-standing modules store BWR fuel on 165.1-mm (6.5-in.) center spacing, and a sliding low-friction support system limits the seismic loads applied to the fuel. Application of this fuel storage experience has permitted expansion of storage capacity for spent fuel at Morris and at BWR reactors, permitting continued operation until federal programs for long-term storage have been clarified and implemented.