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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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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.
F. A. Nichols
Nuclear Technology | Volume 40 | Number 1 | August 1978 | Pages 98-105
Technical Paper | Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT78-A26703
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The essentials of radiation damage in metals and alloys are reviewed with special emphasis on the spatial distribution of the vacancies and interstitials produced. These concepts are then related to our current understanding of the phenomena of radiation hardening, radiation embrittlement, radiation creep, radiation swelling, and radiation growth. It is concluded that radiation hardening and radiation embrittlement in thermal reactors and at lower temperatures in fast reactors are best gauged by a measure of the number of primary knock-on atoms having an energy greater than some threshold energy. The other phenomena mentioned are best gauged as rate processes proportional to the rate of point defect production. No one gauge of radiation damage is best for all phenomena.
