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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.”
Jeffrey A. Borkowski, Gordon E. Robinson, Anthony J. Baratta, Matthew Kattic
Nuclear Technology | Volume 103 | Number 1 | July 1993 | Pages 34-48
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT93-A34828
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Boiling water nuclear reactors (BWRs) may experience density wave instabilities. These instabilities cause the density, and consequently the mass flow rate, to oscillate in the shrouded fuel bundles. This effect causes the nuclear power generation to oscillate because of the tight coupling of flow to power, especially under gravity-driven circulation. To predict the amplitude of the power oscillation, a time domain transient analysis tool may be employed. The modeling tool must have sufficient hydrodynamic detail to model natural circulation in two-phase flow as well as the coupled nuclear feedback. TRAC/BF1 is a modeling code with such capabilities. A dynamic system model is developed for a typical BWR. Using this tool, it is demonstrated that density waves may be modeled in this fashion and that their resultant hydrodynamic and nuclear behavior correspond well to simple theory. Several cases are analyzed using this model, the goal being to determine the coupling between the channel hydrodynamics and the nuclear power. As predicted by others, the two-phase friction controls the extent of the oscillation. Because of this sensitivity, existing conventional methodologies of implementing two-phase friction into analysis codes of this type can lead to significant deviation in results from one case to another. It is found that higher dimensional nuclear feedback models reduce the extent of the oscillation.