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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.”
Matthew J Memmott, Annalisa Manera
Nuclear Technology | Volume 191 | Number 3 | September 2015 | Pages 199-212
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT14-103
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Integral pressurized water reactors are innovative reactors in which all of the components typically associated with the nuclear steam supply system of a nuclear power station are located within the reactor pressure vessel. In order to facilitate this modification in large [∼1000-MW(electric)] light water reactors (LWRs), compact heat exchangers such as microchannel heat exchangers must be used. Previous attempts at using microchannel heat exchangers were unsuccessful since they are prone to vapor locking and crud blockage when the primary coolant boils. Therefore, the authors propose the use of a flashing drum to facilitate boiling in conjunction with a primary microchannel heat exchanger for a large integral LWR. The integral inherently safe light water reactor (I2S-LWR) is used as a basis for the implementation of this novel concept. The high-temperature, high-pressure secondary water generated in the secondary loop through heating in the microchannel primary heat exchanger of the I2S-LWR is sent to a flashing drum where 99.9% pure vapor is extracted and sent to the turbines. This prevents boiling in the primary heat exchanger that in turn reduces crud deposition, flow instabilities, and the potential for channel blockage or vapor locking in the small channel sizes of microchannel heat exchangers. The benefits and disadvantages of this approach are presented in this paper. Unfortunately, this innovative approach to nuclear steam generation for integral LWRs is challenged by a potential decrease in thermodynamic efficiency. Therefore, a sensitivity study is presented that explores the impact of several design variables on the thermodynamic efficiency of the plant. As part of this study, a simple and a complex Rankine cycle were modeled in order to determine the impact that system design modifications can play in recovering thermodynamic efficiency lost by the steam drum. Both cycles utilize turbines, condensers, and condensate/recirculation pumps, while the complex Rankine cycle utilizes a four-stage turbine with subsequent separation and open feedwater heaters. The optimized efficiencies for the simple and complex Rankine cycles are 31% and 33%, respectively, indicating that additional system enhancements to the power conversion system could compensate for the inclusion of a flashing drum.
