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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.”
Bernard André, Gérard Ducros, Jean Pierre Lévêque, Morris F. Osborne, Richard A. Lorenz, Denis Maro
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 1 | April 1996 | Pages 23-50
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35221
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During the 1970s, reactor safety authorities developed increasing interest in methods for accurately predicting the extent of hazards associated with severe accidents in light water reactors (LWRs). In response to these concerns, out-of-pile experimental projects were initiated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the French Nuclear Protection and Safety Institute, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA), respectively. Both experimental efforts were designed for source term characterization of the fission products (FPs) released from LWR fuel samples under test conditions representative of severe accidents, i.e., in oxidizing or reducing atmospheres at temperatures up to 2700 K (at ORNL) and 2570 K (at CEA). The experimental devices, procedures, and parameters are described. The combined database of available results is summarized and related to experimental conditions. Using Booth diffusion theory, diffusion coefficients of the FPs were calculated, and their evolution with temperatures in the 1070 to 2700 K range were plotted. The results show the good agreement between the independently determined ORNL and CEA FP diffusion coefficient values. By plotting the data in Arrhenius fashion, it has been possible to do the following: