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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.
Yea-Kuang Chan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 200 | Number 1 | October 2017 | Pages 80-92
Technical Note | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2017.1338879
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The baseline and verification performance tests based on American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Performance Test Code 6 (PTC 6) for Maanshan Nuclear Power Station (MNPS) Unit 1 were successfully conducted prior to and after the replacement of a high-pressure turbine rotor. In order to verify that the actual improvement in electrical output resulting from this replacement meets the vendor’s guarantee, measurement uncertainty analysis of the thermal performance test was calculated. Two verification performance tests show that the deviation for the corrected heat rates of the two tests differs by only 0.11%, which therefore meets the ASME PTC 6 requirements where the deviation between two tests should be within 0.25%. Thus, the quality of the test results is acceptable. After accounting for the test uncertainty, the test results demonstrated that the improvement in gross electrical output compared to the baseline performance test is between 12.57 and 22.63 MW(electric), which is higher than the contract guarantee of 10.0 MW(electric). Moreover, the major parameters of the turbine cycle measured during verification performance tests have established a reference base for monitoring the plant operating performance and provide useful information to turbine cycle design for a nuclear power plant.