Biographical Memoirs Volume 85 (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Walter Henry Zinn
Walter Henry Zinn
Pages 364-376
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From page 364... ...
Bros. Pach by Photo
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From page 365... ...
In those exciting days nuclear physicists were asking how many neutrons were emitted by a uranium nucleus undergoing fission induced by a neutron. If the answer were greater than one, a nuclear chain reaction was possible; if less than one, a divergent chain reaction was impossible.
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From page 366... ...
The multiplication constant was found to be a disappointing k = 0.87, but Fermi was confident that purer uranium and graphite and a better lattice dimension would achieve the magical k = 1.0. By late 1941 the plutonium branch of the uranium project was consolidated under Arthur Compton at the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory, and Zinn accompanied Fermi to the Met Lab.
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From page 367... ...
According to his son Professor Robert Zinn of Yale, Zinn spoke at home only of pleasant happenings; yet he would explode when he was too involved with people he regarded as foolish. In those earliest days the AEC had hardly decided on how to develop nuclear energy.
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The High Flux, renamed the Materials Testing Reactor (MTR) , had already received extensive preliminary design at Oak Ridge.
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Although EBR-1, MTR, and the BWR were the main efforts at Argonne, the laboratory designed or built several other reactors: the first medium power (300 kW) heavywater reactor; the huge D2O tritium producers built and operated at Savannah River, South Carolina, by the Du Pont Company; and power reactors cooled by various coolants.
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The company flourished and was much involved in large-scale pressurizedwater reactors. Eventually GNEC was acquired by Combustion Engineering Company, and Zinn became head of its fastgrowing Nuclear Division.
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Choices had to be made, and Zinn's view greatly influenced the earliest decision as to which paths to follow. Two basically different paths were suggested by Zinn: variants of the naval reactor STR, which led to the commercial PWRs and BWRs, and the fast breeder, which led to the EBR-1 and its successor, EBR-2, and breeders in Russia, Japan, the United Kingdom, France, and India.
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reactor plan. WALTER ZINN AS VIEWED BY HIS SON, PROFESSOR ROBERT ZINN Walter Henry Zinn was born December 10, 1906, in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, and died on February 14, 2000, in Clearwater, Florida.
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From page 373... ...
Walter frequently recalled events that surrounded the beginning of the Manhattan Project and the first chain reaction. His descriptions corresponded with those that have been published by historians, but captured much more of the excitement of the moment and also the great concern that scientists had for Germany's development of the atomic bomb and the possibility that the Germans were ahead of the United States in the race to produce the first bomb.
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He firmly believed in a bright future for nuclear energy. When in 1948 the AEC assigned responsibility for reactor development to the Argonne National Laboratory, Walter emerged as a natural leader of the U.S.
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Scattering cross sections of various elements for D-D neutrons.
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From page 376... ...
:30-31. 1954 Heterogeneous power reactors.
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