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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.
T. C. Luu, J. L. Friar, A. C. Hayes
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 152 | Number 1 | January 2006 | Pages 98-105
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2567
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In high neutron flux environments where isomers can be strongly populated by nucleonic reactions, isotope abundances from reaction network chains can be affected by the population of nuclear isomers. At high temperatures and densities, there is the additional possibility of populating these isomers electromagnetically. Here, we examine the rates for electromagnetic excitation of the isotopes of several isomers of interest both in astrophysics and applied physics (e.g., 235U, 193Ir, and 87,88Y). We consider six possible electromagnetic processes, namely, photoabsorption, inverse internal conversion, inelastic electron scattering, coulomb excitation, and (,') and (e,e') reactions. We find that for plasma temperatures kT ~ 1 to 10 keV, the electromagnetic reactions rates are negligible. Thus, we conclude that reaction network calculations do not need to include the possibility of electromagnetically exciting nuclear isomers. This is true in both stellar and terrestrial thermonuclear explosions, as well as in plasma conditions expected at the National Ignition Facility.