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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.”
Johan G. Visser, W. Paul M. Mercx, George L. C. M. Vayssier
Nuclear Technology | Volume 105 | Number 1 | January 1994 | Pages 59-69
Technical Paper | Special on Nuclear Criticality Safety / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT94-A34911
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An extensive program of experimental work has been performed at the TNO Prins Maurits Laboratory on the quenching of hydrogen/air flames in various geometries on a medium scale by partial inertization. The main parameters investigated were the composition of the gas mixture and the measure of obstruction of the flow field in order to vary the degree of turbulence. The fuel concentration was varied between equivalence ratios of 0.25 and 1.00. The influence of carbon dioxide and nitrogen addition was investigated during separate trials. Both inert gases were added up to 30 vol% in the various geometrical arrangements. On the basis of an initial study by Sherman et al., a basic methodology has been developed for the estimation of explosion effects of hydrogen/air/inert mixtures. The method is a simplification of the actual processes during the experiments and is therefore only indicative. It is intended to be used by those who are not expert in the field. Knowledge of the gas composition can be used to safety advise applications on a large scale, on the basis of four conservatively chosen regimes of explosion severity.
