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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
Tomaz Zagar, Matjaz Ravnik
Nuclear Technology | Volume 140 | Number 1 | October 2002 | Pages 113-126
Technical Paper | Radioisotopes | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3327
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of activation studies of TRIGA research reactor concrete shielding are given. Samples made of ordinary and barytes concrete were irradiated in the reactor to simulate neutron activation in the shielding concrete. Long-lived neutron-induced gamma-ray-emitting radioactive nuclides were measured in the samples with a high-purity germanium detector. The most active long-lived radioactive nuclides in the ordinary concrete samples were found to be 60Co and 152Eu. In the barytes concrete samples, the most active long-lived radioactive nuclides were 60Co, 133Ba, and 152Eu. Activation in the concrete was also calculated using the ORIGEN2 code and compared to experimental results. Simple radioactive nuclide generation and depletion calculation using one-group cross-section libraries provided together with the ORIGEN2 code did not give conservative results. Significant discrepancies were observed for some nuclides. For accurate long-lived radioactive nuclide generation in reactor shielding, material-specific cross-section libraries should be generated and verified by measurement.
