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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.
T. Norimatsu, D. Harding, R. Stephens, A. Nikroo, R. Petzoldt, H. Yoshida, K. Nagai, Y. Izawa
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 3 | April 2006 | Pages 483-499
Technical Paper | Fast Ignition | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1162
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The current status of the fabrication, injection, and tracking of fast ignition targets is summarized including on cryogenic technologies for direct-drive, laser fusion targets with and without a reentrant guide cone for additional heating lasers. The fabrication of low-density foam and the drilling of fragile foam shells are current issues in the fabrication of fast ignition targets with reentrant cones. Fuel loading to the targets is a challenging issue in the mass-production process of the targets for a fusion power plant. Two fuel-loading methods are proposed for the fast ignition target with the cone. Preliminary experiments of injection and tracking of real-size targets have started showing promising results.