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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.”
Su-Jong Yoon, Gilles J. Youinou (INL)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 482-492
The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling of wire-wrapped fuel assembly is challenging due to the geometric complexity and many contacts between the wire and fuel rod. To obtain the reliable and accurate predictions in pressure drop, velocity and temperature fields of wire-wrapped geometry, the uncertainty of CFD model should be identified and minimized. The present study conducted the sensitivity tests of pressure drop, velocity and temperature profile to the mesh density, boundary layer mesh and turbulence model by employing a commercially available CFD software, STAR-CCM+ version 12.06.010. The fluid-only and conjugate heat transfer models with 7-pin fuel assembly were adopted to find the baseline model parameters for the full geometry modeling with 217 pins. The CFD results show that the size of mesh and presence of boundary layer mesh play an important role in predictions of the pressure drop. The effects of mesh size, boundary layer mesh and turbulence model on the peak temperature of fluid and cladding wall were not significant. The fluid-only model with closed-gap approach could overestimate the peak temperature around the contacts.