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Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
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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.”
Shoji Kotake, Yoshihiko Sakamoto, Takatsugu Mihara, Shigenobu Kubo, Nariaki Uto, Yoshio Kamishima, Kazumi Aoto, Mikio Toda
Nuclear Technology | Volume 170 | Number 1 | April 2010 | Pages 133-147
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the 2008 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants / Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-7
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
This paper describes the current status of the design study and the related research and development for an advanced loop-type fast reactor: the Japan sodium-cooled fast reactor (JSFR). First, the development targets and the major design requirements are established. Then, a cost-down approach in which developing innovative technologies is key to being competitive with another future energy source is discussed. Here, the development status of several innovative technologies such as a two-loop cooling system, reliable reactor system, simplified fuel-handling system, passive reactor shutdown system, mitigation measure against a core disruptive accident, and minor actinide-bearing oxide fuel core is described. Last, a review of JSFR development and the demonstration plan for the innovative technologies are discussed.