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Division members promote the advancement of mathematical and computational methods for solving problems arising in all disciplines encompassed by the Society. They place particular emphasis on numerical techniques for efficient computer applications to aid in the dissemination, integration, and proper use of computer codes, including preparation of computational benchmark and development of standards for computing practices, and to encourage the development on new computer codes and broaden their use.
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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.”
Ninos S. Garis, Imre Pázsit, Urban Sandberg, Tell Andersson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 123 | Number 3 | September 1998 | Pages 278-295
Technical Paper | Reactor Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2899
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A method is described by which the axial position of a control rod can be determined. The method is based on the influence of a partially inserted control rod on the axial flux profile. By measuring this flux profile, the control rod position can be in principle unfolded. One problem is however that the relationship between rod position and flux profile is rather implicit and cannot be explicitly inverted. Thus, it is suggested here to use neural network techniques to unfold the rod position from the measured flux profile. For training of the network, a large number of flux profiles are needed, corresponding to various known rod positions. These data can be generated by advanced core calculational codes. In this study, the Studsvik core master system SIMULATE was used. The method was tested with good results on both fully simulated data as well as on a measurement taken at the Swedish pressurized water reactor Ringhals 4.
