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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.
J.W. Powers, E.G. Lovell, I.N. Sviatoslavsky, R.L. Engelstad
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 19 | Number 3 | May 1991 | Pages 740-745
Inertial Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST91-A29433
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Structural integrity issues are addressed for a symmetric illumination laser driven tritium production facility. At critical locations in the reaction chamber's skeletal frame, mechanical stresses and deflections from self-weight loading are evaluated by finite element methods. Thermal stress analyses of the tiles constituting the chamber's first wall include a comparison of the response of carbon/carbon composite and graphite as well as the influence of irradiation. The results substantiate a viable design for the principal aspects of the reaction chamber.