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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.”
Jan Machacek, Laurent Cantrel, Peter Kluvanek, Marek Liska, Ondrej Gedeon
Nuclear Technology | Volume 163 | Number 2 | August 2008 | Pages 245-251
Technical Paper | Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT08-A3984
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Behavior of iodine fission product is of prime importance for short-term radiological consequences in a severe accident occurring on a pressurized water nuclear reactor. Iodine speciation in the reactor coolant system is commonly predicted with severe accident simulation software devoted to the transport and deposition of fission products and structural materials, for instance, the SOPHAEROS module of ASTEC. In these calculation tools, chemical equilibrium is assumed to be reached instantaneously whatever the conditions are. However, some thermodynamic data are still uncertain because of lack of experimental data. Quantum-chemical calculations can be appropriate tools to estimate equilibrium constants in a first step and maybe later to determine some kinetic constants for further implementation in such codes to better assess iodine chemical behavior. This paper is an attempt to calculate some equilibrium reactions for relevant reactions that are susceptible to impact iodine chemistry. The accuracy obtained for such calculations depends on the basis set used. Moreover, relativistic effect has to be taken into account for heavy atoms like iodine or cesium to get reliable predictions.