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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.”
Heinrich R. Obermoller, David A. White
Nuclear Technology | Volume 96 | Number 3 | December 1991 | Pages 337-345
Technical Paper | Enrichment and Reprocessing System | doi.org/10.13182/NT91-A34594
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A simple model based on a stage concept that can be used to predict the effects of operating variables on the separation of isotopes by chemical exchange is described. The particular application studied is chemical exchange of uranium isotopes in an ion exchange column that has NT total theoretical stages. Other important operating parameters are the number of stages in the exchange band Ns and the chemical exchange equilibrium constant ∈. A model of the process is developed and simulated by a computer program. The results are correlated to give simple expressions based on the assumption that one-half of the band that emerges from the column is taken as enriched feed with a concentration y. For small values of ∈, the optimum value of Ns is given by 1.313 and y = x0(1 + 0.551∈), where x0 is the feed concentration.
