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Remembering ANS member Gil Brown
Brown
The nuclear community is mourning the loss of Gilbert Brown, who passed away on July 11 at the age of 77 following a battle with cancer.
Brown, an American Nuclear Society Fellow and an ANS member for nearly 50 years, joined the faculty at Lowell Technological Institute—now the University of Massachusetts–Lowell—in 1973 and remained there for the rest of his career. He eventually became director of the UMass Lowell nuclear engineering program. After his retirement, he remained an emeritus professor at the university.
Sukesh Aghara, chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department Heads Organization, noted in an email to NEDHO members and others that “Gil was a relentless advocate for nuclear energy and a deeply respected member of our professional community. He was also a kind and generous friend—and one of the reasons I ended up at UMass Lowell. He served the university with great dedication. . . . Within NEDHO, Gil was a steady presence and served for many years as our treasurer. His contributions to nuclear engineering education and to this community will be dearly missed.”
H. L. Wilkens, A. V. Hamza, A. Nikroo, N. E. Teslich
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 49 | Number 4 | May 2006 | Pages 809-812
Technical Paper | Target Fabrication | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-A1205
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The current point design for ignition targets for the National Ignition Facility has a beryllium ablator. As Be is essentially impermeable to hydrogen, conceptually the shell will be filled by boring through the shell with a laser, then attaching a fill-tube. Examination of focused ion beam (FIB) technology is under way as an alternative to laser drilling. Holes of 40, 20, and 15 m diameter have been successfully ion milled through a 47 m thick Be layer. These holes are clean, though take several hours to make, and the geometry is limited by the aspect ratio of the depth to the diameter of the hole. Work was also done to investigate the possibility of using a FIB to create a counter-bore for the insertion and attachment of a fill-tube in a Be shell which has a pre-existing hole. Because the FIB can be controlled to sub-micron scales, the counter-bore can be easily centered on the through-hole and the side-walls and base of the counter-bore can be made very smooth. Finally, a proof-of-principle experiment was made to show that a Be wire could be attached to an in-situ micromanipulator and then be placed inside the counter-bore.