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Conference Spotlight
Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.
Victor C. Leite, Roberto Schirru, Miguel Mattar Neto
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 5 | May 2019 | Pages 637-645
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1516056
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the main roles of the nuclear fuel bundle spacer grid (SG) is to safely support the fuel rods (FRs) through springs and dimples. The SG design is an important matter for nuclear power plant operation when a damaged FR could release fission products. For this work, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is applied to define the geometries of the springs and dimples existing in a SG. Other algorithms had been used to optimize these geometries but not PSO. This paper proposes a PSO variable model and its fitness function in order to define an optimized geometry for the spring and the dimple so that they can provide sufficient gripping forces and minimize stresses. The implemented PSO was able to generate geometries of springs and dimples with stresses minimized and with a specific required stiffness value. The results of these two characteristics are compared with other results in the literature. For further work, PSO will be used to optimize other important design characteristics of a SG: grid-to-rod fretting, coolant flow-induced vibration, and the function of mixing coolant.