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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.
Jonathan G. Teague, Roberta N. Mulford
Nuclear Technology | Volume 206 | Number 8 | August 2020 | Pages 1195-1212
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2019.1701345
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Impact testing of general purpose heat sources (GPHSs) and their component GPHS clads is done to benchmark extensive safety calculations quantifying launch safety. Impact testing is done in the Isotope Fuels Impact Tester (IFIT), a large-bore gas gun at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Efforts to conduct an impact test at the extreme low end of the temperature range for launch have highlighted uncertainties in determining the GPHS clad temperature during impact tests. In IFIT impact tests, the GPHS clad temperature is inferred from the temperature of the radiological confinement. Heating tests have been done in the IFIT to determine the fueled clad surface temperature as a function of the surface temperature of the tantalum radiological confinement can. Direct measurement of clad temperatures in the impact configuration are described and the effect of emissivity of the various components indicated. The analytical model used to predict clad temperatures is seen to work well at temperatures above 625°C. Appropriate values of emissivity for use in the model were measured in the experiment. Calculation of the experimental clad impact temperature using the ANSYS thermal transport model is necessary at clad temperatures below 625°C. ANSYS modeling indicates that the clad temperature in a recent low-temperature impact was outside the relevant range for launch safety modeling of GPHS clad behavior.