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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.”
D. Cordall, R. M. Cornell, K. W. Jones, J. S. Waddington
Nuclear Technology | Volume 34 | Number 3 | August 1977 | Pages 438-448
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT77-A31809
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Some fuel assemblies containing pins manufactured by British Nuclear Fuels Limited failed during irradiation in the Dodewaard Boiling Water Reactor. At discharge, the assemblies had accumulated a mean burnup of 14 870 MWd/Te(U) [14.87 MWd/kg(U)]. A selection of failed and unfailed pins from two of these assemblies was examined by the Central Electricity Generating Board to locate the primary failure sites and to identify the failure mechanism. Eddy-current signals not attributable to any visible feature were observed near the bottom grid site of the seven pins identified as failures. Metallographic examination of this region of four of these pins revealed a primary failure in the form of a penetrating crack in the cladding. It was inferred that the eddy-current signals from the remaining three failed pins originated at similar sites. The failure characteristics were identical to those known to have been caused by power ramps. Furthermore, increases in turbine off-gas and coolant iodine activities were coincident with large power increases at the failure location caused by movement of control blades. It was therefore deduced that the failure of these pins was a consequence of power ramping. A nonpenetrating crack that was not detected by eddy-current testing was found in the unfailed pin that experienced the greatest increase in power. The characteristics of this crack were the same as those found in failed pins. This is regarded as further evidence that the primary source of failure had been located in the failed pins. Several other instances of clad penetration and an end plug failure were observed that were caused by hydriding of the cladding following coolant ingress at the site of the primary failure. Although severe oxidation and associated metal loss were observed at grid positions on most pins, no evidence of clad penetration by this mechanism was found.