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The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
Kazys K. Almenas, Yih-Yun Hsu, Marino Dimarzo, Zen-You Wang, Gary A. Pertmer, Richard Lee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 82 | Number 3 | September 1988 | Pages 341-354
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34135
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A sufficiently large data base of repeated integral thermal-hydraulic loop tests has been accumulated recently from which generalized conclusions can be drawn. Evidence obtained from experiments performed in the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) loop show that qualitative as well as quantitative differences exist between integral and separate effect tests. For separate effect tests, flow conditions are controlled continuously and usually steady (or quasi-steady) states are of interest. Integral facilities are “closed” systems and reactor safety oriented investigations center on transient behavior for which only initial conditions can be specified. It is shown that integral flow systems have a generic capability of amplifying (or damping) small perturbations and usually can operate in one of several possible alternate flow states. These characteristics can lead to two distributions of interexperiment variations; the differences can follow a Gaussian distribution or a bifurcation. In the UMCP test program, several examples of repeat experiments whose trajectories fall outside a Gaussian distribution were observed. Such experimental results have implications for the planning of experimental test programs and for the verification process of computational models.