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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.
Mitchel E. Cunningham, Courtney R. Hann, Anthony R. Olsen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 47 | Number 3 | March 1980 | Pages 457-467
Technical Paper | Fuel | doi.org/10.13182/NT80-A32400
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
With the increasing sophistication and use of computer codes in the nuclear industry, there is a growing awareness of the need to identify and quantify the uncertainties of these codes. Work is now being performed at Battelle-Pacific Northwest Laboratories to study the uncertainties in steady-state stored energy calculations by using linear propagation of uncertainties. This method predicts the uncertainty of variables by propagating input variances through models. Comparison of Monte Carlo analysis to linear propagation shows good agreement and verifies the adequacy of linear propagation. Linear power, radial gap width, fuel thermal conductivity, flux depression, and fuel heat capacity are all shown to be parameters of major importance when calculating both stored energy and its uncertainty. The uncertainty for stored energy at beginning-of-life is ∼17% (99% confidence level) and rises to a maximum of 37% during a simulated two-cycle power history.