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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.”
Luis E. Herranz, José I. Linares, Beatriz Y. Moratilla
Nuclear Technology | Volume 159 | Number 1 | July 2007 | Pages 15-24
Technical Paper | Fission Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT07-A3853
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Future world energy demand will require a sustainable energy generation system. Optimization of power cycles has become a key element to better exploit natural resources, to minimize waste production, and even to reduce fuel cycle cost. Aware of this, nuclear technology is developing what has been termed Generation IV designs. In particular, the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) concept is a promising technology to reach much higher thermal efficiencies than present nuclear power plants.By using a classical thermodynamic methodology, this paper demonstrates that regenerative reheating would significantly enhance the thermal performance of a reference Brayton cycle based on pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) technology. The regenerative reheating is conducted by a live gas fraction () extracted from the coolant inventory exiting the nuclear reactor. Optimization of results in efficiency values as high as 53 and 61%, respectively, under current and midterm technology scenarios. In addition, reheating would allow an effective and easy-to-conduct "load-follow" operation with no loss of thermal efficiency in the upper range of . Even further, under the midterm technology scenario, reheating would make it possible to cogenerate H2 from the enthalpy content of the fraction exiting reheater.