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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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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.”
Mei-Ya Wang, Tsung-Kuang Yeh
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 186 | Number 2 | May 2017 | Pages 180-189
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295639.2016.1273014
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Hydrogen water chemistry (HWC), aiming at coolant chemistry improvement, has been adopted worldwide for mitigating intergranular stress corrosion cracking in operating boiling water reactors (BWRs). However, a conventional hydrogen injection system employed in this technology was designed to operate only at power levels >30% of the rated power or at coolant temperatures >232°C. This system is usually in an idle and standby mode during a start-up operation. The coolant in a BWR during a cold shutdown normally contains a relatively high level of dissolved oxygen from intrusion of atmospheric air. Accordingly, the structural materials in the primary coolant circuit (PCC) of a BWR could be exposed to a strongly oxidizing environment for a short period of time during a subsequent start-up operation. In this study, the computer code DEMACE was used to investigate the variations in redox species concentration and in electrochemical corrosion potential (ECP) of structural components in the PCC of a domestic BWR during start-up operations with HWC. Simulations were carried out for power levels ranging from 3.8% to 11.3% during start-up operations. Our analyses indicated that for selected power levels with steam present in the core, a higher power level would tend to promote a more oxidizing coolant environment and therefore lead to less HWC effectiveness on ECP reduction. At even lower power levels in the absence of steam, the effectiveness of HWC was more prominent. At a feedwater hydrogen concentration of merely 0.1 parts per million, significant ECP reductions in the PCC of the BWR were observed.