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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.”
Ruiping Guo (NWMO)
Proceedings | 16th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference (IHLRWM 2017) | Charlotte, NC, April 9-13, 2017 | Pages 482-489
This paper describes the thermal and mechanical influence of a single level conceptual deep geological repository (DGR) in a hypothetical crystalline host rock geosphere on the ground surface. Sensitivity studies are performed to investigate the influence of Young’s modulus for the rock, the depth of the repository and the convective heat transfer coefficient applied at the ground surface. The influence of the mechanical boundary condition applied on the far-field vertical surfaces is also studied. For the cases evaluated, the presence of the conceptual DGR does not have any significant influence on the surface temperature. There is a general slow uplift of the ground surface due to thermal expansion over an area larger than the repository footprint, with a maximum uplift of about 28 cm occurring above the centre of the repository occurring after about 3,400 years. No mechanical damage to the rock comprising the ground surface is anticipated.
