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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. Kelm, E. Bohnert
Nuclear Technology | Volume 129 | Number 1 | January 2000 | Pages 119-122
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management and Disposal | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3050
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The yields of the different radiolytic products formed by gamma radiolysis from NaCl brines at ambient temperature and dose rates between 0.1 and 1 kGy/h were determined. At a chloride concentration of 5.3 mol/l, H2, O2, and ClO3- were formed proportional to the dose and independent from the dose rate with G values of 0.6, 0.16, and 0.074, respectively. At a concentration of 2 mol/l, the chlorate yield dropped to a value close to zero, and the gas composition became stoichiometric. At pH 12 and in the presence of heavy metal ions, the yield of oxygen increased at the expense of chlorate. The concentrations of hypochlorite and chlorite were usually in the micromole per litre range. In pressurized solutions of 5.3 mol/l Cl- where all radiolytic gases were kept dissolved, equilibrium concentrations of radiolytic products were almost reached at a dose of ~1 MGy. The partial pressure of radiolytic gases was ~35 bars, and the chlorate concentration was ~170 mol/l.