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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.”
H. Huang, K. Engelhorn, K. Sequoia, A. Greenwood, W. Sweet, L. Carlson, F. Elsner, M. Farrell
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 73 | Number 2 | March 2018 | Pages 98-106
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2017.1387460
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The 100-Gbar Laser Direct Drive program calls for ablator capsules with no defects larger than 0.5 μm in lateral dimension and fewer than ten defects with lateral dimensions between 0.1 and 0.5 μm. Compared to laser indirect drive capsules, this represents > 10× reduction of defect length scale and >500× reduction in defect number density. This presents major challenges to both fabrication and metrology. In this paper, we will discuss the proof-of-principle work conducted at General Atomics to identify metrology techniques suitable for 100-Gbar target characterization. We present a detailed study of dark-field imaging, laser scatterometry, and environmental scanning electron microscopey. We identify dark-field imaging as the best approach for meeting the 100-Gbar metrology needs.
