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Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.”
R. R. Paguio, D. J. Jasion, K. M. Saito, M. E. Schoff, R. M. Jimenez, J. F. Hund, M. P. Farrell
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 63 | Number 2 | March-April 2013 | Pages 268-273
Technical Paper | Selected papers from 20th Target Fabrication Meeting, May 20-24, 2012, Santa Fe, NM, Guest Editor: Robert C. Cook | doi.org/10.13182/FST63-2-268
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Deuterated polyethylene films as thin as 50 m have been produced using a four-post heated press method. These films are then cut into the desired shape (foil) and are used for the magnetic recoil spectrometer (MRS). The MRS is a diagnostic tool for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) and at the OMEGA Laser Facility at the University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The films produced by this method are more uniform and have fewer defects than foils prepared by previous methods. Whereas traditional films had a thickness limitation of 100 m, this new heat pressing method allows the fabrication of 50-m films, which is the desired thickness for MRS foils. The foils produced and characterized by General Atomics have decreased the neutron measurement uncertainty of the MRS instrument by a factor of 2 compared to the previous foils. This work has also been extended to fabricate thin polymer films and films with sinusoidal patterns from other polymeric materials for ICF experiments. This paper will discuss the heat pressing technique used in the fabrication of these films for the NIF and OMEGA MRS as well as other patterned and flat polymer films. The morphology of these foils and the advantages that they provide will also be discussed.
