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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 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.
W. Breitung, R. Redlinger
Nuclear Technology | Volume 111 | Number 3 | September 1995 | Pages 395-419
Technical Paper | A New Light Water Reactor Safety Concept Special / Nuclear Reactor Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT95-A15869
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe conducted and sponsored a study on containment loads from hydrogen combustion pressures that could occur in case of an unmitigated severe accident in a future 1500-MW(electric) pressurized water reactor. The analysis of large-scale distribution tests leads to the conclusion that the full spectrum of combustion modes from slow deflagration to global detonation must be considered in the absence of any hydrogen control system. New experimental and theoretical results are presented for fast flames, deflagration-to-detonation transitions, and marginal and stable detonations in hydrogen-air mixtures on reactor relevant scale. Maximum possible combustion loads for severe accidents are predicted for a typical dome geometry. The results provide a database on global combustion loads for design studies on future severe accident resistant containments.
