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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
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.
P. C. Souers, E. M. Fearon, E. R. Mapoles, J. D. Sater, G. W. Collins, J. R. Gaines, R. H. Sherman, J. R. Bartlit
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 14 | Number 2 | September 1988 | Pages 855-863
Tritium Properties and Interactions with Material | Proceedings of the Third Topical Meeting on Tritium Technology in Fission, Fusion and Isotopic Applications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 1-6, 1988) | doi.org/10.13182/FST88-A25242
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The expected value of nuclear spin polarization to inertial confinement fusion is recapitulated. A comparison of brute force polarization versus dynamic nuclear polarization, as applied to solid deuterium-tritium, is given, and the need for a long triton polarization memory time (longitudinal nuclear relaxation time) is shown. The time constant for 25 mol%T2-50 DT-25 D2 (D-T) is a short 0.3 s at 5 K and waiting in the presence of tritium radioactivity lowers it to 0.1 s. Enriched 90 to 96% molecular DT has been synthesized and held 3 to 4 hours at 10 K, which lowers the overall J=1 T2 concentration to about 0.1%. The resulting memory time can be raised in this way to 0.7 to 0.8 s. These samples were then melted and nHp added, which increased the memory times to 6 to 8 s - an increase of twenty-fold over regular D-T at 5 to 6 K. The theory shows that the species shortening the triton memory time is the J=1 T2, which can be reduced in our samples only by radioactive self-catalysis. Cryogenic distillation is considered as a possible means of removing the J=1 T2 from molecular DT.