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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.
Robert A. FJeld, Thomas J. Overcamp
Nuclear Technology | Volume 65 | Number 3 | June 1984 | Pages 402-408
Technical Paper | Nuclear Safety | doi.org/10.13182/NT84-A33395
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect of an electric field on the deposition of a confined aerosol in the presence of ionizing radiation is determined experimentally. A method to determine depositional rate coefficients from measurements of steady-state relative aerosol concentrations in a continuously reinforced chamber is used to obtain experimental data for monodisperse aerosols. Results were obtained for 0.1- and 0.5-µm-diam polystyrene aerosols in a 6000-cm3 container in which the average air absorbed dose rate is 0.22 Gy/h (22 rad/h). Data are obtained in the absence and in the presence of an externally applied electric field of 105 V/m. Significant reductions in aerosol concentration were observed in the chamber upon application of the electric field. In the absence of ionizing radiation, the depositional rate coefficient increases by a factor of 5 to 10. In the presence of ionizing radiation it increases by more than two orders of magnitude. Based on these results, it is concluded that electrical deposition may have potential use as the basis for a technique to reduce concentrations of nuclear aerosols.