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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.”
R. N. Nair, T. M. Krishnamoorthy
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 2 | May 1996 | Pages 235-245
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35252
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Mathematical models have been developed to predict the spatial and temporal profiles of radionuclide concentration in the near field and far field of a shallow land burial facility. The disposal facility considered is a reinforced concrete vault located 2.9 m above the water table. The source term is derived from leaching considerations based on diffusion-controlled kinetics for the transfer of radionuclides from the cylindrical waste form into the surrounding pore water of the backfill material. The concentration of radionuclides in the backfill at the bottom boundary of the vault is converted to a release rate into the near field using the outgoing water flux. The delay and decay during transit in the sand and soil layers are taken into account while evaluating the concentration and release at the near field-water table boundary. Using this release rate as the inlet flux, the concentration of radionuclides in the groundwater has been computed using a two-dimensional model. Results indicate that the vault facility with cement as the backfill material could contain almost all the radionuclides commonly encountered in the waste stream generated during the operation of nuclear power plants. However, the storage of some of the long-lived radionuclides produced in fuel reprocessing plants such as 79Se, 99Tc and 129I in the vault facility need to be regulated for restricting the resultant dose within the apportioned dose limit prescribed for the facility.