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September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.”
Cyra Neugebauer, Y. Hörstensmeyer, C. Day
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 3 | April 2020 | Pages 215-220
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2019.1704139
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
One of the main design drivers of the EU-DEMO fuel cycle is to avoid unnecessary hydrogen isotope separation. In the tritium plant, this implies a novel functionality for isotope rebalancing (IR) and protium removal (PR). The task of IR is to adjust the deuterium-tritium ratio by several percent gradually over time in order to establish the required fuel mixture composition before reinjection into the torus. The PR is needed to process and separate protium, which inevitably enters the system via outgassing or replacement reactions. The candidate technology for the IR/PR function is temperature swing absorption, which is based on anticyclical operation of two absorption columns with reversed isotope effects. In order to characterize the separation process, a new test rig has been designed and is currently being assembled. This paper describes the principle idea of the process, develops a model to predict the performance, and presents simulation results for a DEMO-relevant gas composition. Palladium and vanadium have been selected for the modeling. It is shown that at the end of one column tritium could be separated with 92.5% purity. At the other column, protium with 46.4% and deuterium with 44.8% purity could be removed. A subsequent parameter study showed that the ideal gas supply would be 40% of the total length of the column and that 22 was the optimal number of cycles before extraction.
