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Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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ANS Student Conference 2025
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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.”
Ming Ding, Xiaoyong Yang, Jie Wang
Nuclear Technology | Volume 169 | Number 3 | March 2010 | Pages 205-217
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A9374
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A recuperator is a key component and plays an important role in the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor combined with gas turbine (HTGR-GT) system. A distributed parameter model was proposed to study the dynamic characteristics of the recuperator of the HTGR-GT cycle, and this model was solved using an implicit arithmetic. Basic characteristics of the recuperator were analyzed using responses of the recuperator to step disturbances of temperature and mass flow. The response of the recuperator to the temperature disturbances has two different characteristic times 1 and 2 depending on the relation between the response and the disturbance. The response of the recuperator to mass flow disturbance has a characteristic time 4 that is between 1 and 2. An example of coupled disturbance of temperature and mass flow was simulated by the distributed parameter model. This example shows the influence of the three characteristic times to the dynamic characteristics of the recuperator. When the system power of HTGR-GT is regulated slowly, the core temperature distribution of the recuperator hardly varies. However, when the electric load of the system is rejected from full power, the core temperature, especially in the front of the recuperator, suffers from a drastic change in temperature.