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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.
K.J. O'Brien, G.A. Moses, A.M. White
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 4 | Number 2 | September 1983 | Pages 883-888
Inertial Confinement Fusion | doi.org/10.13182/FST83-A22972
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It has been proposed to surround the target chamber of the Light Ion Fusion Target Development Facility with a water shield. Such a shield would effectively isolate the radioactive chamber from the environment while providing a medium in which to absorb energy imparted to the target chamber walls following the impact of the fireball. Radioactivity calculations will be presented for five different wall materials. If the water surrounding the chamber provides a damping mechanism for the wall vibrations, it also provides a medium through which a pressure pulse can be transmitted to the outer wall of the shield region. It is desirable to minimize the pressure loading upon this structure. An investigation of the effects of a bubble screen upon the propagation of the water pressure wave is presented, along with some possible criteria for the design of a screen.