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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.”
Y. K. M. Peng et al.
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 56 | Number 2 | August 2009 | Pages 957-964
Power Plants, Demo, and Next Steps | Eighteenth Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy (Part 2) | doi.org/10.13182/FST09-A9034
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The use of a fusion component testing facility to study and establish, during the ITER era, the remaining scientific and technical knowledge needed by fusion Demo is considered and described in this paper. This use aims to test components in an integrated fusion nuclear environment, for the first time, to discover and understand the underpinning physical properties, and to develop improved components for further testing, in a time-efficient manner. It requires a design with extensive modularization and remote handling of activated components, and flexible hot-cell laboratories. It further requires reliable plasma conditions to avoid disruptions and minimize their impact, and designs to reduce the divertor heat flux to the level of ITER design. As the plasma duration is extended through the planned ITER level (∼103 s) and beyond, physical properties with increasing time constants, progressively for ∼104 s, ∼105s, and ∼106 s, would become accessible for testing and R&D. The longest time constants of these are likely to be of the order of a week (∼106 s). Progressive stages of research operation are envisioned in deuterium, deuterium-tritium for the ITER duration, and deuterium-tritium with increasingly longer plasma durations. The fusion neutron fluence and operational duty factor anticipated for this "scientific exploration" phase of a component test facility are estimated to be up to 1 MW-yr/m2 and up to 10%, respectively.