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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
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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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.
E. J. Dowdy, E. J. Lozito, E. A. Plassmann
Nuclear Technology | Volume 25 | Number 2 | February 1975 | Pages 381-389
Technical Paper | Material Dosimetry | doi.org/10.13182/NT75-A24375
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The BIG-TEN critical assembly at the Los Alamos Scientific Critical Experiments Facility was designed to provide a neutron spectrum somewhat like that expected in the liquid-metal fast breeder reactor. The relatively uncomplicated configuration of this assembly makes it useful for comparison of measured and calculated neutronic characteristics, and the high precision reproducibility of reactivity makes it valuable for intercomparisons of reaction rates. The central neutron spectrum was measured using protonrecoil proportional-counting techniques with pulse shape discrimination capability for the energy range from 27 to 1200 keV.