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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Latest News
The Frisch-Peierls memorandum: A seminal document of nuclear history
The Manhattan Project is usually considered to have been initiated with Albert Einstein’s letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in October 1939. However, a lesser-known document that was just as impactful on wartime nuclear history was the so-called Frisch-Peierls memorandum. Prepared by two refugee physicists at the University of Birmingham in Britain in early 1940, this manuscript was the first technical description of nuclear weapons and their military, strategic, and ethical implications to reach high-level government officials on either side of the Atlantic. The memorandum triggered the initiation of the British wartime nuclear program, which later merged with the Manhattan Engineer District.
A. Robinson, L. El-Guebaly, D. Henderson
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 60 | Number 2 | August 2011 | Pages 715-719
Nuclear Analysis & Experiments | Proceedings of the Nineteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (TOFE) (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST11-A12469
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Currently, there is an ongoing international effort to develop and characterize W alloys that are suitable for fusion applications. In this report, five key W alloys were examined for the advanced divertor design of ARIES-ACT - the latest ARIES tokamak design. The most promising alloys appear to be W-1.1TiC and W-La2O3. At the end of the divertor lifetime (~4 years), the maintenance dose of these alloys very closely matches those of W with nominal impurities. Unfortunately, even with pure W, the divertor is not clearable, which indicates that it must be recycled or disposed of in a geological repository. The radiation damage and transmutation are expected to degrade the physical properties of any material. The radiation damage level in W is low compared to ferritic steel - a remarkable feature for tungsten. For ARIES-ACT operating conditions, transmutation of W does not appear to present a significant issue.
