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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.”
Man Gyun Na, Yoon Joon Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 2 | August 2003 | Pages 180-196
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control, and Human-Machine Interface Technologies | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3408
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this work, the receding horizon control method was used to control the water level of nuclear steam generators and applied to two linear models and also a nonlinear model of steam generators. A receding horizon control method is to solve an optimization problem for finite future steps at current time and to implement the first optimal control input as the current control input. The procedure is then repeated at each subsequent instant. The dynamics of steam generators is very different according to power levels. The receding horizon controller is designed by using a reduced linear steam generator model fixed over a certain power range and applied to a Westinghouse-type (U-tube recirculating type) nuclear steam generator. The proposed controller designed at a fixed power level shows good performance for any other power level within this power range. The steam generator shows actually nonlinear characteristics. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is implemented for a nonlinear model of the nuclear steam generator to verify its real performance and also shows good responses.