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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.”
Yoshiyuki Kataoka, Tadashi Fujii, Michio Murase
Nuclear Technology | Volume 116 | Number 1 | October 1996 | Pages 127-135
Technical Paper | Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35317
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
To evaluate the heat release characteristics of a primary containment vessel (PCV) external spray (one of the PCV cooling systems utilizing the steel PCV wall as the heat transfer medium), the thermal-hydraulic characteristics of the falling liquid film on the PCV surface have been investigated experimentally. Then, the performance of the PCV external spray cooling system was evaluated using the experimental findings. The following results were obtained: 1. Heat transfer coefficients of the falling liquid film under steady-state conditions were increased as the film flow rate per unit length of the liquid film width increased, and they agreed with Wilke’s correlation within about ±15%. 2. The PCV surface temperature, when preheated up to 150°C, which is the supposed PCV temperature under a severe accident, decreased below 100°C within a few seconds when the PCV external spray was initiated, and boiling on the PCV surface could not be maintained. 3. Heat transfer coefficients of the falling liquid film under transient conditions were higher initially due to the boiling effect; however, they decreased rapidly and approached those under steady-state conditions. 4. The PCV external spray for the conceptually designed PCV could suppress the PCV pressure below the design goal under a severe accident (failure of core cooling under low pressure). The maximum PCV pressure decreased as the spray flow rate increased and as the ratio of the PCV surface covered by the falling liquid film increased.