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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.
V. K. Manchanda, P. B. Ruikar, S. Sriram, M. S. Nagar, P. N. Pathak, K. K. Gupta, R. K. Singh, R. R. Chitnis, P. S. Dhami, A. Ramanujam
Nuclear Technology | Volume 134 | Number 3 | June 2001 | Pages 231-240
Technical Paper | Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT01-A3198
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
While the tri-n-butyl phosphate (TBP)-based PUREX process has been the workhorse of the nuclear fuel reprocessing industry for the last four and a half decades, a few drawbacks associated with the use of TBP have caused concern to the separation scientists and technologists. These shortcomings may pose a serious challenge particularly during the reprocessing of (a) short cooled thermal reactor fuels, (b) fast reactor fuels with the larger Pu content and significantly higher burn up, and (c) while treating various waste streams for their disposal to the environment. The N,N-dialkyl aliphatic amides have received particular attention as alternate potential extractants for the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels in view of (a) the innocuous nature of their degradation products, namely, carboxylic acids/amines and (b) the possibility to incinerate the used solvent leading to reduced volume of secondary waste. The physical and chemical properties of these amides are influenced strongly by the nature of alkyl groups. The extractant N,N-dihexyl octanamide (DHOA) was found to be a promising candidate among a large number of extractants studied. Laboratory batch studies as well as mixer settler studies were performed under process conditions with DHOA and compared with those of TBP. DHOA was found to extract Pu(IV) more efficiently than TBP, both at trace-level concentration as well as under uranium loading conditions. In addition, the extraction behavior of Am(III) and Zr(IV) was studied at varying nitric acid concentrations (1 to 6 M). Extraction behavior of uranium at macroconcentrations (9.9 to 157.7 g/l) was carried out at different temperatures, and it was observed that DU decreased with the increase in U loading as well as with the increase of temperature (in the range 25 to 45°C) and that the two-phase reaction was exothermic in nature. Mixer settler studies on U(VI) revealed that DHOA is similar to TBP during the extraction cycle but better than TBP during the stripping cycle.