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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
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.”
Panle Liu, Bo Li, Xue Zheng, Xiang Chen, Qiang Li, Junzhao Zhang, Yihang Chen, Jian Zhou, Rui Ma, Zhongmin Huang
Fusion Science and Technology | Volume 81 | Number 5 | July 2025 | Pages 413-424
Research Article | doi.org/10.1080/15361055.2024.2437331
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Achieving advanced divertor configurations and high-confinement operating regimes is crucial for mitigating divertor heat loads and exploring enhanced confinement physics in the HL-2M tokamak. However, these scenarios with highly elongated plasmas face severe vertical displacement events that can lead to rapid plasma termination and potential device damage. Robust active control of vertical instability is therefore essential. As HL-2M lacks internal control coils, we developed two sets of vertical stabilization (VS) control systems, each employing a pair of external poloidal field (PF) coils, PF main power supplies, and VS power supplies. This paper details the first vertical stabilization (VS1) control system’s circuit diagram, hardware architecture, and software implementation and discusses issues encountered during commissioning and their solutions. By improving the internal hardware of the VS power supply, the voltage rise time was reduced to approximately 30 μs, resolving branch current imbalances. The transmission delay of the control signals is approximately 38 μs. Preliminary plasma experiments demonstrated effective vertical displacement control with the VS1 control system, achieving a maximum plasma elongation of 1.73 and typical control accuracy of ~20 mm. This work lays the foundation for robust control under high-parameter operational scenarios and the design and implementation of the higher-power second vertical stabilization (VS2) control system.
