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Thermal Hydraulics
The division provides a forum for focused technical dialogue on thermal hydraulic technology in the nuclear industry. Specifically, this will include heat transfer and fluid mechanics involved in the utilization of nuclear energy. It is intended to attract the highest quality of theoretical and experimental work to ANS, including research on basic phenomena and application to nuclear system design.
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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.”
Yen-Fu Chen, Yen-Kung Lin, Rong-Jiun Sheu, Shiang-Huei Jiang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 168 | Number 2 | November 2009 | Pages 508-512
Shielding | Special Issue on the 11th International Conference on Radiation Shielding and the 15th Topical Meeting of the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division (Part 2) / Decontamination/Decommissioning | doi.org/10.13182/NT09-A9234
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The paper aims to estimate the residual activity in the concrete shielding of a nuclear power plant (NPP) after 40 yr of design service life and to determine if the whole massive concrete shielding must be treated as radioactive waste for future decommissioning. The process was a combination of experiment and calculation. Nonradioactive concrete samples collected from the Lungmen NPP were measured to determine the initial concentrations of major, minor, and trace elements in the concrete shielding by neutron activation analysis, inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry, and elemental analysis. The neutron flux distribution and depth-dependent cross sections, which were generated by SAS1, in the 60-cm-thick reactor shielding wall and 200-cm-thick dry well wall of the Lungmen NPP were fed to the ORIGEN-S code to calculate the activity distribution in the concrete shielding after 40 yr of reactor full-power operation. Comparing the activity with the exemption levels, it was found that the dry well wall of the Lungmen NPP can be handled as construction waste for immediate decommissioning. However, most of the reactor shielding wall must be treated as radioactive waste even after a 25-yr cooling time.