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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.”
Aya Diab, Michael Corradini
Nuclear Technology | Volume 169 | Number 2 | February 2010 | Pages 97-113
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9355
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
CANDU reactors are pressurized heavy water-moderated and heavy water-cooled reactor designs. During commissioning of nuclear power plants, a range of possible accidents must be considered to assure a plant's robust design. Consider a complete channel blockage in the CANDU reactor. Such an extreme flow blockage event would result in fuel overheating, pressure tube failure, partial melting of fuel rods, and possible molten fuel-moderator interactions (MFMIs). The MFMI phenomenon would occur immediately after the pressure tube rupture and would involve a mixture of steam, hydrogen, and molten fuel being ejected into the surrounding moderator water in the form of a high-pressure vapor bubble mixture. This bubble mixture would accelerate the surrounding denser water, causing interfacial mixing due to hydrodynamic instabilities at the interface. As a result of these interfacial instabilities, water is entrained into the growing two-phase bubble mixture with attendant mass and heat transfer, e.g., water vaporization and fuel oxidation. A comprehensive model has been developed to investigate these complex phenomena resulting from a postulated complete flow blockage and complete pressure tube failure. This dynamic model serves as a baseline to characterize the pressure response due to a pressure tube rupture and the associated MFMI phenomena. Theoretical modeling of these interrelated complex phenomena is not known a priori, and therefore, a semiempirical approach is adopted.