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Breaking ground on a new approach to construction
The drive to Kairos Power’s reactor demonstration site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., is not only scenic—it’s historic. Nearly 85 years ago, roughly 30,000 construction workers transformed orchards and farmland into a key Manhattan Project site. Depending on your route, you may pass by one of the three gatehouses that were once military checkpoints controlling access to Atomic Energy Commission production facilities.
H. K. Clark
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 24 | Number 2 | February 1966 | Pages 133-141
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE66-A18298
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The influence of the distribution of 235U, 239Pu, and 233U in water on the minimum critical mass, the minimum critical concentration per unit length of cylinder, and the minimum critical mass per unit area of slab surface is calculated. Two energy groups are employed in the calculations with parameters normalized to force agreement between calculations and experiments performed with water-reflected spheres containing uniform aqueous solutions having a wide range of concentrations. Calculations made with these parameters for a water-reflected cylinder, in which the optimum distribution for minimum mass was approximated within five coaxial regions, agree well with experimental results. Minimum critical masses, concentrations per unit length of cylinder, and masses per unit area calculated for 235U, 239Pu, and 233U are, respectively, 768 g, 16.9 g/cm, 0.417 g/ cm2; 492 g, 10.6 g/cm, 0.266 g/cm2; and 571 g, 13.5 g/cm, 0.362 g/cm2.