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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
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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.”
P. T. Lang, T. Nakano, L. Garzotti, B. Pégourié, B. Ploeckl, S. Sakurai
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 75 | Number 3 | April 2019 | Pages 178-196
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2018.1471960
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The research plan of the JT-60SA, a superconducting tokamak device currently under construction, requests a powerful pellet injection system for its particle fueling and edge-localized-mode (ELM) pacing experiments. These investigations, foreseen to answer basic questions with respect to the operation of ITER and a future fusion power plant like DEMO, need pellets with flexible parameters delivered precisely and reliably for control purposes. Here, we present a conceptual design of this system based on classical pellet technology. Analysis showed pellets will show the best performance for fueling and most likely also for ELM pacing when injected from the torus inboard side, despite the limited maximum pellet speed caused by this approach. This is due to constructional constraints rising from the fact the JT-60SA vacuum vessel is already under construction, enforcing inboard injection via a multibend guiding-tube system and limiting the maximum pellet speed to about 470 m/s. To match this boundary condition and fulfill the need for precise control, a centrifuge accelerator has been chosen. Based on the stop cylinder principle and equipped with a double accelerator arm, it can host up to six steady-state ice extruders working simultaneously for pellet production. This way, all system requirements expressed in the research plan can be well covered, providing even some headroom for better flexibility during the planned investigations. Details of our design and the reasoning for the layout chosen are provided in this paper.