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Radiation Protection & Shielding
The Radiation Protection and Shielding Division is developing and promoting radiation protection and shielding aspects of nuclear science and technology — including interaction of nuclear radiation with materials and biological systems, instruments and techniques for the measurement of nuclear radiation fields, and radiation shield design and evaluation.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
David W. DePaoli, Timothy C. Scott
Nuclear Technology | Volume 101 | Number 1 | January 1993 | Pages 54-66
Technical Paper | Waste Management Special / Radioactive Waste Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34767
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A numerical model of transient diffusive mass transfer through a circular hole that connects two semiinfinite media was used as a means of determining potential effects of waste container penetrations on the release of immobilized contaminants into the environment. The finite difference model as developed necessarily includes treatment of mass transport in both the waste and surrounding medium and allows calculation of release rates for cases with and without preferential adsorption and differing diffusivities of the two media. The dimensionless contaminant release rate was found to vary over several orders of magnitude depending on the product of the ratio of the distribution coefficient and the media diffusivities only. As would be intuitively expected, partitioning favoring the surrounding medium and higher relative waste medium diffusivity cause higher transport rates. There was definitely no unexpected enhancement in the release rate in the case of perforations over that of an uncontained waste form.
