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The division was organized to promote the advancement of knowledge of the use of particle accelerator technologies for nuclear and other applications. It focuses on production of neutrons and other particles, utilization of these particles for scientific or industrial purposes, such as the production or destruction of radionuclides significant to energy, medicine, defense or other endeavors, as well as imaging and diagnostics.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
Luis E. Herranz, Virginia Peyrés, Jesús Polo, María J. Escudero, Manuel M. Espigares, José López-Jiménez
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 2 | November 1997 | Pages 95-109
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35419
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
During some pressurized water reactor risk-dominant sequences, most of the radioactivity is discharged at very high velocities into nearly saturated pools. An experimental plan for pool scrubbing and its associated hydrodynamics under representative boundary conditions is carried out in the PECA facility. The retention tests show that a substantial fraction of particle absorption takes place at the pool entrance because of inertial removal mechanisms. This submergence-independent component of the decontamination factor (DF) becomes dominant for small submergences (S ≤ 1.25 m). The behavior of the gas at the pool entrance is investigated experimentally, and a close relation between primary bubble size and inlet gas flow is observed. In addition, the retention tests are modeled with the SPARC90 and BUSCA-AUG92 codes. SPARC90 shows fairly good agreement with the experimental data and indicates the importance of the entrance region in particle absorption. Nonetheless, the approximations and drawbacks of the aerosol removal models used in SPARC90 at the injection zone suggest the need for further separate-effects tests to validate, improve, and/or develop specific models for the entrance region and the need for additional hydrodynamic tests to better describe primary bubble behavior under a jet injection regime.