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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.
Valery A. Kashparov, Yuri A. Ivanov, Sergey I. Zvarisch, Valentin P. Protsak, Yuri V. Khomutinin, Alexander D. Kurepin, Edvard M. Pazukhin
Nuclear Technology | Volume 114 | Number 2 | May 1996 | Pages 246-253
Technical Paper | Radioactive Waste Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT96-A35253
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The oxidation of irradiated Chernobyl nuclear fuel at 670 to 1170 K for 3 to 21 h resulted in its destruction into fine particles, the dispersal composition of which is well described by lognormal distribution regularity. The median radius of the formed particles does not depend on the annealing temperature and decreases with the increase of the annealing period from 10 to 3 μm. Proceeding from the dispersal composition and matrix composition of the Chernobyl hot fuel particles, it can be concluded that the oxidation of nuclear fuel was one of the basic mechanisms of hot fuel particle formation during the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. With oxidation in air and the dispersal of irradiated oxide nuclear fuel at as low as 670 K, ruthenium, located on the granular borders, is released. Ruthenium is oxidized to volatile RuO4, sublimated, and condensed on materials of iron. Nickel and stainless steel can be efficiently used at high temperatures (tested to 1200 K) for radioruthenium adsorption in accidents and for some technological operations. As the temperature of hot fuel particles annealed in inert media increases from 1270 to 2270 K, the relative release of radionuclides increases in the following sequence: cesium isotopes; europium isotopes; cerium isotopes; americium isotopes; and ruthenium, plutonium, and curium isotopes.