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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.”
Per Lindén, Gudmar Grosshög, Imre Pázsit
Nuclear Technology | Volume 124 | Number 1 | October 1998 | Pages 31-51
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT98-A2907
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Flow measurements were performed with pulsed-neutron activation (PNA) in a specially designed test loop. A stationary neutron generator was used as a neutron source, and the detection of the induced 16N activity in the flow was performed by two bismuth germanate detectors. Stable flow could be produced in the loop and measured with high precision (~0.5% error) by a scale and a stopwatch method, concurrent with the PNA measurement. A series of measurements have been made by varying the position of the detectors, the flow velocity, etc. The accuracy of the various time-averaging methods that are used in the evaluation of the PNA measurement could be assessed by a comparison with the flow calibration data. In particular, the dependence of the error of the different PNA evaluation methods as functions of detector spacing and flow velocity was determined. The measurements are part of a program that seeks to develop a flowmeter suitable for practical applications, which will include backing up the method with flow calculation and signal-processing methods such as neural networks for off-line calibration of the equipment.