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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.
Earl L. White, Warren E. Berry
Nuclear Technology | Volume 55 | Number 1 | October 1981 | Pages 135-150
Technical Paper | Materials Performance in Nuclear Steam Generator / Material | doi.org/10.13182/NT81-A32837
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Pot boiler tests have been conducted to study the effects of copper and nickel compounds on the tube wastage and support plate denting phenomena observed in steam generators of pressurized water reactors. The results of these tests revealed that copper compounds produced denting when chloride was present, but were not a necessary ingredient since NiCl2 produced even more severe denting in the absence of copper. The pot boiler consisted of seven steel umbrellas mounted on a heated Inconel Alloy 600 tube under boiling conditions at 288°C. Six tests, each of 30-days duration, were conducted with all volatile treatment (morpholine at pH 9.0 to 9.2) in each test. Water chemistry of 50 ppm phosphate (as Na2HPO4) to 15 ppm chlorine (as NaCl) produced wastage on the Inconel tube but no denting (fast linear magnetite growth) of the steel umbrellas. Adding CuO sludge and substituting CuCl for NaCl in the phosphate system reduced the wastage attack on the tubing and produced only incipient denting on the steel umbrellas. Water chemistries of CuO sludge-CuCl (15 ppm chloride) or Fe3O4 sludge-NiCl2 (15 ppm chloride) produced extensive denting, but no wastage, with the attack by NiCl2 being more severe. The NaCl alone or American Society for Testing and Materials sea salt plus NiFe2O4 sludge (15 ppm chloride in both tests) produced no denting of steel umbrellas nor wastage of Inconel tubes, perhaps because tests were not conducted for sufficient time to develop acid-chloride conditions beneath the umbrellas. Microprobe examination revealed that the chloride concentrated at the steel surface in the umbrella-tube crevices of those specimens that exhibited denting. For the most part, nickel (but not copper) was associated with the chloride except at the steel surface
