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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.”
Rencheng Wang, Boxian Chen, Ding Chen, Xuan Zhao
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 12 | December 2020 | Pages 1909-1918
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2020.1721406
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Membranes have been widely used in low-level radioactive wastewater (LLRW) treatment and are under irradiation as a result of radioactive nuclides present in the wastewater, which may cause damage to the membranes and weaken their performances. Irradiation-induced material property changes of several organic membrane matrices and modifiers at different gamma irradiation doses were investigated in this work. The organics and membrane samples were irradiated using a 60Co source at a range of irradiation doses of 0 to 100 kGy. The effects of irradiation on these materials were detected using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy spectra, ultraviolet spectra, and ion chromatography (used to detect membrane leakage). The results indicated that chain scission and cross linking occurred simultaneously in the membrane matrices, while the modifiers tended to polymerize during the irradiation process. As the irradiation dose increased, the chain scission and polymerization became more significant. The polyamide membrane was observed to be more irradiation tolerant in comparison with the other membranes used in this study. In regard to the modifiers, polyvinyl alcohol and 2,3-epoxypropyl trimethyl ammonium chloride showed significant structural changes at an irradiation dose of 2 kGy and polyetherimide and methyl methacrylate at an irradiation dose of 100 kGy, while chain scission was not detected in the other modifiers at irradiation doses of 2, 10, and 100 kGy, indicating that they remained relatively stable at these irradiation doses. These findings provide useful information for the application of membrane technologies in treating LLRW.