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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.”
Emmanuelle Picard, Jean Noirot, Raymond L. Moss, Helmut Plitz, Karl Richter, Jacques Rouault
Nuclear Technology | Volume 129 | Number 1 | January 2000 | Pages 1-12
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-2
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An experimental program focused not only on the study of high-plutonium-content mixed-oxide fuels but also on more advanced "Pu without U" fuel concepts has been launched in the framework of the Consommation Accrue de Plutonium dans les RApides (CAPRA) project. First results of the in-pile and out-of-pile behavior of high-plutonium-content fuels with uranium, such as (U55%,Pu45%)O2, and (U55%,Pu40%,Np5%)O2, and also without uranium, such as (Pu44%,Ce56%)O2, are now available. In particular, the Irradiation à FOrt Pu (IFOP) experiment in the SILOE reactor and the TRAnsmutation and Burning of ActiNides in Triox carrier (TRABANT1) experiments in the High Flux Reactor are presented and the results are analyzed: Up to a burnup of 1.5 at.%, destructive examinations of the IFOP pin have shown that the high-plutonium-content oxide fuel with a large central hole presents the usual global behavior (good pellet integrity, fuel microstructure). The TRABANT1 oxide fuel pin with a 40% Pu and 5% Np content demonstrates that a burnup of 9.5 at.% can be reached without failure by a high-plutonium-content fuel. However, the TRABANT1 pin 1 (oxide pin with 45% Pu), which had run under severe conditions, has failed at ~7 at.% burnup. Destructive examinations of these pins will give more evidence on the causes of the failure. The low-oxygen-to-metal fuel column of (Pu,Ce)O2-x melted, thus confirming the poor conductivity of this fuel.
