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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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. Rene Raffray, Myron A. Hoffman, Thomas Gaskins
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 10 | Number 3 | November 1986 | Pages 1577-1582
Fusion Economic | doi.org/10.13182/FST86-A24957
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A detailed cost study of the ESPRESSO blanket concept for the Tandem Mirror Fusion Reactor has been performed to complement the thermal-hydraulic parametric study of Reference 1. A computer code was developed to size the magnet, blanket and piping components and to evaluate the central cell contribution to the cost of electricity. The two most promising solid breeder/neutron multiplier configurations were studied: natural lithium oxide as the breeder with no multiplier (Case I), and 30% enriched gamma-lithium aluminate as the breeder with beryllium as the multiplier (Case IV). A design window was obtained for each case based on maximum material temperatures and spacing constraints. The minimum cost designs for Case I and Case IV correspond to 31 and 41 mills/kW-hr for the central cell contribution to the cost of electricity, and to optimum neutron wall loadings of 2.3 and 3.4 MW/m2, respectively.
