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Nuclear Installations Safety
Devoted specifically to the safety of nuclear installations and the health and safety of the public, this division seeks a better understanding of the role of safety in the design, construction and operation of nuclear installation facilities. The division also promotes engineering and scientific technology advancement associated with the safety of such facilities.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 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.”
Carolyn McGraw, Germina Ilas
Nuclear Technology | Volume 183 | Number 3 | September 2013 | Pages 436-445
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors / Radiation Transport and Protection | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A19431
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
New pressurized water reactor (PWR) cross-section libraries were generated for use with the ORIGEN-ARP depletion sequence in the SCALE nuclear analysis code system. These libraries are based on ENDF/B-VII.0 nuclear data and were generated using the two-dimensional depletion sequence, TRITON/NEWT, in SCALE 6.1. The libraries contain multiple burnup-dependent cross sections for seven PWR fuel designs, with enrichments ranging from 1.5 to 6 wt% 235U and burnups from 0 to 90 GW(d)/tonne U. The computational methodology and studies performed to establish an optimal depletion model for cross-section library generation are discussed in this paper. Verification against detailed TRITON simulations for the considered assembly designs showed that depletion calculations performed in ORIGEN-ARP with the pregenerated libraries provide results similar to those obtained with direct TRITON depletion while greatly reducing the computation time. Validation of the libraries, carried out using radiochemical assay measurements and decay heat measurements for PWR spent fuel, showed good agreement between calculated and experimental data.
