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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.
M. J. F. Notley, J. R. MacEwan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 2 | Number 2 | April 1966 | Pages 117-122
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NT66-A27491
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect of UO2 density on fission product gas release and sheath expansion has been determined in an irradiation experiment in which the performance of fuel elements with densities between 10.42 and 10.74 g/cm3 was compared at ∫λdθ values of 39 and 42 W/cm. Diametral sheath strain was less for the lower density elements, but fission product gas release and the extent of grain growth were greater as the density decreased. A correlation between the extent of grain growth in the UO2 and the fractional gas release was found to exist in this test and to apply to a large number of other irradiations; it is suggested that this relationship may be causal and that the fractional gas release is not solely a function of temperature.
