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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.
Norman Rostoker, Michl Binderbauer, Hendrik J. Monkhorst
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 30 | Number 3 | December 1996 | Pages 1395-1402
Innovative Approaches to Fusion Energy | doi.org/10.13182/FST96-A11963143
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A plasma consisting of large orbit non-adiabatic ions and adiabatic electrons is considered. For such a plasma it is possible that the anomalous transport characteristic of Tokamaks can be avoided. Experimental evidence in support of this possibility has been obtained with energetic beams injected into Tokamaks for heating in DIII-D and TFTR and with energetic fusion products in JET. Energetic particles were observed to slow down and diffuse classically in the presence of anomalous transport of thermal particles. Assuming that classical transport theory is applicable we have elected to investigate magnetic confinement for field reversed configurations (FRC's). This configuration was chosen because there are some 20 years of experimental investigation, about 600 published papers and current programs in Japan to provide background information for a case where a substantial fraction of the ions are non-adiabatic and contribute to the current. The investigation begins with self-consistent equilibrium solutions of the Vlasov-Maxwell equations. The classical Fokker-Planck equation is employed to evaluate Coulomb collisions and transport. Reactor configurations based on D - T, D - He3 and H - B11 reactions are considered. Energy balance is investigated considering the only losses to be Bremsstrahlung.
