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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.”
Zhang Yingzeng, Xiang Qingpei, Hao Fanhua, Guo Xiaofeng, Xiang Yongchun, Chu Chengsheng, Zeng Jun, Luo Fei, Ze Rende
Nuclear Technology | Volume 204 | Number 1 | October 2018 | Pages 83-93
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1464839
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Compton camera is a promising instrument for nuclear material imaging in arms control scenarios. In planning to build a Compton camera to detect the symmetry of shielded nuclear materials, the energy spectrum of gamma-rays escaping from the Steve Fetter Nuclear Warhead model is obtained using Monte Carlo simulation. Then, a point model is defined for our study. The proposed Compton camera uses a 5-cm × 5-cm × 1-mm double-sided silicon strips detector as the scattering detector and a segmented ϕ5.08 × 5.08-cm NaI(Tl) array as the absorbing detector. How high-energy gamma-rays impact low-energy characteristic gamma-ray imaging is studied. The result shows that high-energy gamma-rays will reduce the imaging accuracy and signal-to-noise ratio. The holistic angle resolution measured can reach 4.15 deg by all characteristic gamma-rays. The symmetry research result shows that the Compton camera can detect the symmetry property of a nuclear warhead with obvious symmetry or asymmetry.