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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.”
Hiroshige Kumamaru, Yutaka Kukita, Hideaki Asaka, Ming Wang, Etsuo Ohtani
Nuclear Technology | Volume 126 | Number 3 | June 1999 | Pages 331-339
Technical Note | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT99-A2978
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effectiveness of intentional depressurization of a pressurized water reactor primary system as a means to maintain core cooling during a small-break loss-of-coolant accident (SBLOCA) was studied. The investigation was based on experiments conducted at the Rig of Safety Assessment-V (ROSA-V) Large Scale Test Facility (LSTF) and RELAP5/MOD3 code calculations performed for LSTF geometry, together with single lumped-volume model calculations - all simulating hypothetical total failure of the high-pressure-injection system. For cold-leg breaks ≶2.5% of the leg cross-sectional area, experimental and analytical results have shown that the break discharge depressurizes the primary system to the accumulator (ACC) and low-pressure-injection (LPI) system injection pressures, and thus the core cladding temperature would be maintained below ~1000 K. For break areas ≤1.0%, on the other hand, additional depressurization means are needed to initiate the ACC injection before the core is overheated. RELAP5/MOD3 calculations have shown that steam venting through the pressurizer power-operated relief valves would be effective in depressurizing the primary system to the ACC and LPI pressures. However, for break areas <0.5%, the peak cladding temperature would finally reach the safety criterion of 1473 K.