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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 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.
R. N. Anderson, N. A. D. Parlee
Nuclear Technology | Volume 13 | Number 3 | March 1972 | Pages 297-300
Technical Note | Chemical Processing | doi.org/10.13182/NT72-A31085
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A nitride-fueled nuclear reactor is proposed in which the fission products are selectively removed from the reactor in a liquid alloy, and makeup fuel added during operation. The concept is based on the behavior of the nitrogen-nitride equilibria in liquid fuel-tin alloy systems where an actinide nitride fuel in contact with liquid metal alloy will reversibly form or dissolve depending on the temperature, the nitrogen pressure on the system, and the fuel content of the alloy. Consequently, controlling the temperature and the nitrogen pressure over the solid nitride fuel-liquid alloy phases will result in a critical mass of nitride being maintained and the fission products that form being dissolved in the liquid alloy above it. The liquid alloy phase may be removed, the fission products eliminated, and the alloy recycled to the reactor with or without makeup fuel additions.
