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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.”
S. I. Bhuiyan, Anisur Rashid Khan, M. M. Sarker, M. Rahman, Z. Gulshan Ara, M. Musa, M. A. Mannan, I. Mele
Nuclear Technology | Volume 97 | Number 3 | March 1992 | Pages 253-263
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT92-A34633
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A data base for the TRIGAP code is generated for the 3-MW TRIGA MARK-II research reactor in Bangladesh. The library is created using the WIMS-D/4 code. Cross sections are calculated from zero burnup to 37% of initial 235U in 20 burnup steps. The created TRIGAP library is tested through practical calculations and is compared with experimental values or with values in the safety analysis report (SAR). Excess reactivity of the fresh core configuration is measured and determined to be 10.27 $, while a value of 10.267 $ is obtained using the generated library. By choosing burnup steps of 0, 50, 350, and 750 MW.h, the whole operating history is covered. The calculated temperature defect at 1 and 3 MW is 1.15 and 3.59 $ compared with the experimental values of 1.02 and 3.64 $, respectively. The xenon value obtained at 1 and 3 MW is 2.21 and 3.20 $, respectively, compared with 3.57 $ at 3 MW in the SAR. The TRIGAP code with its new library is used for calculating fast and thermal flux distributions close to values from the SAR. The temperature coefficient of low-enrichment uranium fuel, calculated for three different burnups, shows a good agreement with the SAR. The TRIGAP and WIMS-D/4 codes are applied to power-peaking calculations. Total peaking factors calculated as products of axial, radial, and hot rod peaking factors for four configurations are (a) the compact core with graphite reflector, 3.15; (b) the same core with water reflector, 3.39; (c) the core with a central thimble, graphite reflector, 5.01; and (d) the same core with a water reflector, 5.29. In the SAR, the total peaking factor for the compact core is 3.5 and with a central thimble, 5.63. Excellent agreement between calculations and measurements establishes the validity of the library.