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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.”
Yu. Turkin, H. Maassberg, C. D. Beidler, J. Geiger, N. B. Marushchenko
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 50 | Number 3 | October 2006 | Pages 387-394
Technical Paper | Stellarators | doi.org/10.13182/FST06-5
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The magnetic configuration of the Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator is optimized following a set of criteria including a rotational transform profile with low shear and minimized bootstrap current that must be controlled for proper functioning of the island divertor. This paper studies the compensation of residual bootstrap current by using electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD). The modeling shows that the loop voltage induced by ECCD leads to a redistribution of the current density with a diffusion time of ~2 s. The relaxation time of the total current is much longer, however - for W7-X plasma parameters the total toroidal current reaches steady state after several L/R times requiring hundreds of seconds. In order to keep the toroidal current and its profile in the acceptable range, a feed-forward or predictive control method using ECCD as actuator is proposed. The main steps are as follows: (a) calculate the bootstrap current distribution using plasma parameters measured in the online transport analysis and (b) determine and apply ECCD as needed. For the current control to work properly and to avoid long relaxation times, the reaction time of the control loop must be less than the current skin time.
