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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.
Siegfried Brandes, Wolfgang Kohl
Nuclear Technology | Volume 79 | Number 2 | November 1987 | Pages 135-143
Technical Paper | Nuclear Power Plants for Generation of Heat / Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT87-A34031
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Based on their proven high-temperature reactor (HTR) with pebble-bed core, Brown, Boveri & Cie/ Hochtemperatur-Reaktorbau have developed an HTR-100 plant that combines favorable capital costs and high availability. Due to the high HTR-specific standards and passive safety features, this plant is especially well suited for siting near the end user. The safety concept permits further operation of the plant or decay heat removal via the operational heat sinks in the event of maloperation and design basis accidents having a higher probability of occurrence. In the event of hypothetical accidents, the decay heat is removed from the reactor pressure vessel by radiation, conduction, and convection to a concrete cooling system operating in natural convection. As an example of the new HTR-100 plant concept, a twin-block plant design for extraction of industrial steam is presented.