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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.
C. Fagan, M. Sharpe, W. T. Shmayda, W. U. Schröder
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 76 | Number 4 | May 2020 | Pages 424-429
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2020.1714409
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The effect of a thin alumina coating on stainless steel 316 (SS316) samples on tritium adsorption and transport are reported. Compact films of alumina were produced on the surfaces of pristine SS316 samples using an atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. Subsequently, these samples were exposed for 24 h to a deuterium-tritium gas mixture (PT = 0.5 atm, 25°C). A combination of methods including selective etching and programmed thermal desorption were employed to assess both the depth profile of the tritium concentration in the sample and the total quantity of tritium absorbed, respectively. Tritium was quantitatively determined through the measurement of beta radioactivity using liquid-scintillation counting techniques. Data suggest that SS316 with a thin film of alumina reduces the total tritium uptake by ~25% relative to uncoated samples. Importantly, such films appear to reduce, by a factor of 200, tritium diffusion into SS316 and therefore constitute an effective barrier against tritium transport. This observation is of practical importance for tritium and, generally, reactive gas handling.