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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.
Yung Y. Liu, Lawrence A. Neimark, W. D. Jackson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 87 | Number 1 | August 1989 | Pages 95-103
Technical Paper | TMI-2: Materials Behavior / Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT89-A27640
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Three pieces of control rod and Zircaloy guide tube from the Three Mile Island Unit 2 reactor have been examined at Argonne National Laboratory. Microstructure and microchemistry of the materials have been characterized as a function of their elevations from the core bottom. Within a short distance between the 47- and 52-cm elevations, the microstructure varied from molten Ag-ln-Cd without stainless steel cladding to candling and cladding/Zircaloy metallurgical reactions, to an intact control rod in its Zircaloy guide tube that had transformed into a beta-phase structure. These microstructures provided semiquantitative markers of the temperatures experienced during the accident at this location.
