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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.”
W. Yao, D. Bestion, P. Coste, M. Boucker
Nuclear Technology | Volume 152 | Number 1 | October 2005 | Pages 129-142
Technical Paper | Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3665
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A three-dimensional (3-D) two-fluid model for a turbulent stratified flow with and without condensation is presented, in view of investigating pressurized thermal shock (PTS) scenarios when a stratified two-phase flow takes place in the cold legs of a pressurized water reactor. A modified turbulent K-[curly epsilon] model is proposed with turbulence production induced by interfacial friction. A model of interfacial friction based on an interfacial sublayer concept and three interfacial heat transfer models - namely, a model based on the small eddies-controlled surface renewal concept, a model based on the asymptotic behavior of the eddy viscosity, and a model based on the interfacial sublayer concept - are implemented into a preliminary version of the NEPTUNE code based on the 3-D module of the CATHARE code. As a first step, the models are evaluated by comparison of calculated profiles of velocity, turbulent kinetic energy, and turbulent shear stress with data in a turbulent air-water stratified flow in a rectangular channel and with data for a water jet impacting the free surface of a water pool. Then, a turbulent steam-water stratified flow with condensation is calculated, and some first conclusions are drawn on the interfacial heat transfer modeling and on the applicability of the model to PTS investigations.