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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.”
Javier Martinez, Elia Merzari (ANL), Michael Acton, Emilio Baglietto (MIT)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 644-658
The turbulent flow inside a differentially heated cavity at a Rayleigh number of approximately 109 has been studied through a fully resolved Direct Numerical Simulation using the high-order Spectral Element Method code Nek5000. The case chosen for the present paper includes two physical phenomena: the natural recirculation itself, and the flow inside a curved channel that has been added to bottom right corner of the cavity. Solutions are presented as reference for the validation of models when the two physical phenomena are superposed. Simulations have been carried out either using the Boussinesq approximation or a low-Mach compressible formulation. Significant discrepancies between the two methods inform of the extreme necessary caution to consider when using the Boussinesq approximation in the limits of its applicability. Proper resolution of the DNS has been analyzed by considering the polynomial order convergence of the solution and the computation of the Reynolds stresses budgets.
