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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.
John R. Haines
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1259-1264
Impurity Control and Vacuum Technology | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A39940
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Impurity control system design and performance studies were performed in support of the Tokamak Fusion Core Experiment (TFCX) preconceptual design. Efforts concentrated on the pumped limiter and vacuum pumping system design configuration, thermal/mechanical and erosion lifetime performance of the limiter protective surface, and helium ash removal performance. Analysis results indicate that the limiter/vacuum pumping system design provides marginally adequate helium ash removal. Difficulties in providing adequate helium ash removal for more compact or higher fusion-power-density devices are addressed. Erosion, primarily by disruption-induced vaporization and/or melting, limits the protective surface lifetime to about one calendar year or only about 60 full-power hours of operation. In addition to evaluating impurity control system performance for nominal TFCX conditions, these studies attempt to focus on the key plasma physics and engineering design issues that should be addressed in future research and development programs.