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The Education, Training & Workforce Development Division provides communication among the academic, industrial, and governmental communities through the exchange of views and information on matters related to education, training and workforce development in nuclear and radiological science, engineering, and technology. Industry leaders, education and training professionals, and interested students work together through Society-sponsored meetings and publications, to enrich their professional development, to educate the general public, and to advance nuclear and radiological science and engineering.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
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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.”
Borut Mavko, Andrej Prošek, Francesco D’auria
Nuclear Technology | Volume 120 | Number 1 | October 1997 | Pages 1-18
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT97-A35427
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Quantitative evaluation of thermal-hydraulic code uncertainties is a necessary step in the code assessment process, especially if best-estimate codes are utilized for licensing purposes. With the goal of quantifying code accuracy, researchers in the past developed a methodology based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) that consisted of qualitative and quantitative code assessment. Here, the FFT-based method is applied to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)-Standard Problem Exercise (SPE)-4 test results with pre- and posttest code calculations of the IAEA-SPE-4 experiment. Four system codes (ATHLET, CATHARE, MELCOR, and RELAP5) are used for calculations of the experiment, performed at the PMK-2 facility, which simulated a cold-leg break in a WER-440 plant. The results show that the posttest calculations had better accuracy than did the pretest calculations. None of the best three pre- and posttest calculations were able to predict core dryout, which was the most important phenomenon observed during the test. The results obtained can give an objective indication of the capability of the aforementioned codes in predicting relevant variables characterizing the transient (too few experimental parameters may limit full application of the FFT-based methodology).