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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.”
Tohru Nakatsuka, Yoshiaki Oka, Seiichi Koshizuka
Nuclear Technology | Volume 121 | Number 1 | January 1998 | Pages 81-92
Technical Paper | Reactor Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2821
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The plant system of a supercritical-water-cooled reactor is the once-through direct-cycle type, where steam-water separators and coolant recirculation systems are not necessary. It is different from those of a boiling water reactor (BWR) and a pressurized water reactor. The supercritical-water-cooled reactor is sensitive to perturbations of the feedwater flow rate because all of the core coolant, driven by the feedwater pumps, flows to the turbines without recirculating core flow. The axial coolant density change is three times larger than that of a BWR. It is necessary to analyze the controllability of the reactor against coolant flow and pressure perturbations to assess the technical feasibility of the reactor. The behaviors of a fast reactor cooled by supercritical water are analyzed for three principal perturbations: change of the control rod position, the feedwater flow rate, and the turbine control valve opening. Based on the step responses to the perturbations, the reactor control system is designed such that the pressure is controlled by the turbine control valves, the main steam temperature is controlled by the feedwater flow rate, and the core power is controlled by the control rods. It is not appropriate to control the pressure by the feedwater flow rate like in a supercritical fossil-fired power plant because of the nuclear thermal-hydraulic coupling. Parameters of the control system are selected by the test calculations to satisfy both fast convergence and stability criteria. Reactor behaviors with the designed control system are stable against the perturbations, although because the plant is the once-through direct-cycle type, the coolant inventory is small. Reactors cooled by supercritical light water are controllable with the described control system.