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Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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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.”
Scott A. Comes, Paul J. Turinsky
Nuclear Technology | Volume 83 | Number 1 | October 1988 | Pages 31-48
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle | doi.org/10.13182/NT88-A34173
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A methodology has been developed for determining the family of near-optimum fuel management schemes that minimize the levelized fuel cycle costs of a light water reactor over a multicycle planning horizon. Feed batch enrichments and sizes, burned batches to reinsert, and burnable poison loadings are determined for each cycle in the planning horizon. Flexibility in the methodology includes the capability to assess the economic benefits of various partially burned batch reload strategies as well as the effects of using split feed enrichments and enrichment palettes. Constraint limitations are imposed on feed enrichments, discharge burnups, moderator temperature coefficient, and cycle energy requirements. The methodology, incorporated into a code named OCEON, uses a zero-dimensional reactor physics model and a rapid fuel cycle cost routine to select minimum cost cycling schemes that satisfy all constraints. These candidate schemes are then examined with a two-dimensional nodal reactor physics model to more accurately calculate feed enrichments, batch burnups, and fuel cycle costs. The use of Monte Carlo integer programming to direct the optimization process allows for the determination of a family of low cost schemes from which the fuel manager can select the strategy that best fits his needs.