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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
R.R. Peterson, G.A. Moses, R.L. Engelstad, D.L. Henderson, G.L. Kulcinski, E.G. Lovell, M.E. Sawan, I.N. Sviatoslavsky, J.J. Watrous, R.E. Olson, D.L. Cook
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 8 | Number 1 | July 1985 | Pages 1895-1900
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor | Proceedings of the Sixth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (San Francisco, California, March 3-7, 1985) | doi.org/10.13182/FST85-A40038
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The Light Ion Fusion Target Development Facility (TDF) is expected to test approximately ten targets per day having yields in the 50 to 800 MJ range. This large number of high yield micro-explosions creates design problems in the TDF that are not present in PBFA-I and PBFA-II. The TDF would be the first light ion facility where radioactivity in the target debris and induced in the facility itself constitute a biological hazard. It must have a first wall and a target diagnostics package that can survive repeated mechanical and thermal pulses from the target microexplosions. In addition, the repetition rate is much higher than for present day light ion beam drivers. A preliminary conceptual design for the TDF including a reaction chamber, biological shield, target diagnostics package and driver that addresses these and other problems is presented.
