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The Mission of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division is to promote the development and application of immersive simulation, robotics, and remote systems for hazardous environments for the purpose of reducing hazardous exposure to individuals, reducing environmental hazards and reducing the cost of performing work.
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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.”
Raciel de la Torre Valdés, Juan Luis François (Univ of Mexico), Pedro Morales, Lázaro García (Higher Inst of Technology and Applied Sciences)
Proceedings | Advances in Thermal Hydraulics 2018 | Orlando, FL, November 11-15, 2018 | Pages 1066-1079
Intermediate heat exchangers are one of the most critical devices in the safety of facilities with very high temperature nuclear reactors. In this application, the printed circuit heat exchanger (PCHE) design has shown the greatest advantages in terms of heat transfer, compactness and structural strength. In this work, a thermal-hydraulic model of the zigzag channels PCHE was developed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques. The Nusselt number and the Fanning friction factor obtained from the CFD model was validated by comparison with correlations published by other authors and found by experimental data. Four geometric parameters of zigzag channels such as: zigzag length, zigzag angle, zigzag radius and zigzag phase-shift were chosen to optimize the PCHE design. With this in view, the model was set up with three channels for each cold and hot fluid, achieving a good accuracy. To consider the interaction among parameters with a reduced computing time, the Taguchi method was used to reduce the quantity of analyzed geometric designs. The zigzag angle was found like the most important geometric parameter in the thermal-hydraulic performance of the PCHE. The maximum value of the Nusselt number had the maximum value of zigzag angle and the minimum friction factor had the minimum value of zigzag angle. This is caused by the increment of the real length of the channels and the appearance of reverse flow zones for higher angles.