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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.
Santiago Cuesta-Lopez, J. M. Perlado
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 61 | Number 1 | January 2012 | Pages 385-390
Materials | Proceedings of the Fifteenth International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Systems | doi.org/10.13182/FST12-A13450
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
We report non-equilibrium Molecular Dynamics simulations that provide a nanoscale view for the modeling of shock wave generation in any kind of material. Our methodology reported here is able to cover similar times and length scales as experiments. We are studying the propagation of shock waves, and their consequences: structural transformations and induced melting. We apply our methodology not only to single crystalline materials like Ta, W, but also in double layer conformations of bcc/fcc/bcc and bcc/bcc/bcc materials, with clear interest for Nuclear Fusion Technology. Preliminary results point that W and Ta behave more efficiently in terms of uniformity under shock propagation than lighter materials. Moreover, we show that shocks in double layer structures propagate and generate pressure more efficiently than common structures.