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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.”
Shelly X. Li, Steven D. Herrmann, Michael F. Simpson
Nuclear Technology | Volume 171 | Number 3 | September 2010 | Pages 292-299
Technical Paper | Pyro 08 Special / Reprocessing | doi.org/10.13182/NT10-A10864
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The results of a recently reported series of bench-scale actinide recovery experiments with liquid cadmium cathodes (LCCs) are subjected to a more detailed analysis in this paper. It is suggested that separation efficiency (SE), not separation factor (SF), should be used to assess the effectiveness of an LCC to separate actinides from rare earth (RE) elements. The common definition of SF for any pair of actinide and RE elements in the molten salt/liquid Cd system is the ratio of their distribution coefficients, which are measured under equilibrium conditions. The definition of SE is broader than that of SF. For any pair of actinide and RE elements in the molten salt/liquid Cd system, SE is the ratio of their distribution coefficients, such as SEPu-U = DPu/DU, where DPu and DU are measured at either equilibrium or nonequilibrium conditions. The relationship of SE with SF is linear and can be expressed as SEPu-U = DPu/DU and DPu = SFPu-UDU + b. When DPu and DU are measured under equilibrium conditions, SE is equal to SF.The physical or chemical meaning of the intercept b is not clear. From a mathematical point of view, the absolute values of b reveal the differences between the measured DPu/DU or SE and SF. The negative values of b indicate that the SE measurement results are smaller than the associated SF. The values of b may be used to evaluate the SE of LCC on electrochemically recovered actinides from fission product elements. An electrochemical model was developed to investigate the mechanism of RE contamination of the actinides collected by the LCC. It was confirmed that REs were electrochemically transported into the Cd phase. A more negative LCC voltage has a stronger impact on the quantities of REs transported into the Cd than those of the actinides.
