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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.”
H. P. Chou, J. N. Ning, T. M. Tsai
Nuclear Technology | Volume 101 | Number 1 | January 1993 | Pages 101-109
Technical Note | Waste Management Special / Reactor Operation | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34771
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Two topics are discussed: a method to evaluate and construct a sensor failure detection network and use of the network for signal validation of a complex system such as a nuclear power plant. The network is arranged in a tree structure and consists of plantwide sensor measurements and component models. Sensors are categorized into four classes via a logic state analysis to determine the effectiveness of the tree layouts and to reveal deficiencies in the sensor arrangements. Network building is automatic via a rule-based algorithm. Besides analytical redundancy and parity relations, plantwide consistency checks are implemented in the validation scheme to detect possible common-mode failures and modeling or process faults. Data are structured with an entity relationship and processed with an object-oriented technique. The working sequence is arranged using topological sorting to facilitate on-line, real-time applications. For a demonstration, the package is implemented on a microcomputer and applied to a pressurized water reactor plant for safety parameter validation. Its performance in detecting hypothetical sensor failures during power maneuver transients is presented.