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Remembering Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till, an ANS member since 1963 and Fellow since 1987, passed away on March 22 at the age of 89. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Imperial College, University of London. Till initially worked for the Civilian Atomic Power Department of the Canadian General Electric Company, where he was the physicist in charge of the startup of the first prototype CANDU reactor in Canada.
Till joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1963 in the Applied Physics Division, where he worked as an experimentalist in the Fast Critical Experiments program. He then moved to additional positions of increasing responsibility, becoming division director in 1973. Under his leadership, the Applied Physics Division established itself as one of the elite reactor physics organizations in the world. Both the experimental (critical experiments and nuclear data measurements) and nuclear analysis methods work were internationally recognized. Till led Argonne’s participation in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), and he was the lead U.S. delegate to INFCE Working Group 5, Fast Breeders.
Douglas M. Gerstner, James R. Parry, David J. Broussard, Brandon L. Moon, Anthony W. LaPorta, Charles P. Forshee, Lawrence J. Harrison, Monty L. Conley
Nuclear Technology | Volume 205 | Number 10 | October 2019 | Pages 1266-1289
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/00295450.2018.1556993
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The TREAT facility suspended operations in 1994 after decades of highly successful operation. The TREAT facility began operations in 1958 with a hazards summary report that met the safety-basis regulatory requirements at that time. The TREAT safety basis was later updated in the early 1980s to include a Final Safety Analysis Report (FSAR) and Technical Specifications (TSs) that met the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regulatory requirements at that time. The last substantial update of the TREAT safety-basis documents was performed in 1988 prior to suspension of operations in 1994. After the last update, significant changes in DOE regulatory foundation occurred with nuclear safety rule codification in 10 CFR 830, “Nuclear Safety Management.”
To support resumption of transient testing operations, a complete modernization and a significant rewrite of the TREAT safety-basis documents were required to meet 10 CFR 830, Subpart B, “Safety Basis Requirements.” In addition, a completely updated nuclear safety accident analysis was required to support the current operating strategy and a modern safety posture, as well as bound the safe operations of future experiments.
No one clear regulatory format and content template or guide exists for the FSAR and TS for a pulse-type, air-cooled, graphite-moderated DOE reactor such as TREAT. This paper discusses the unique challenges with (1) updating the TREAT safety basis to current DOE regulatory requirements to support the resumption of transient testing operations; (2) documenting that the TREAT design, safety analysis, and operations ensure that the facility is operated safely; and (3) providing an analysis that supports future experiment operations.
The successful approval of the updated TREAT safety basis was a key milestone in the Resumption of Transient Testing Program.