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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.”
Dong H. Nguyen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 91 | Number 1 | July 1990 | Pages 61-74
Technical Paper | Safety of Next Generation Power Reactor / Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT90-A34441
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The design of the next generation of power reactors will emphasize passive safety and enhanced engineered systems. True passivity can be achieved by capitalizing on natural laws to restore reactor stability during an off-normal event. The most effective stabilizing mechanisms relying solely on natural laws— without human interference—are the feedback reactivities produced by a change in the reactor thermal state. During 1986 and 1987, an important research program was undertaken at the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) to advance the understanding of feedback mechanisms and to investigate passive safety in liquid-metal reactors. The experimental program began with a series of static feedback reactivity measurements aimed at separating feedback components and ended with a demonstration of passive safety in a series of loss-of-flow-without-scram (LOFWOS) to natural circulation tests. Described here are (a) the fundamental experimental concepts used to unfold various feedback components, (b) the analysis of integral data used to construct feedback reactivity models, (c) the comparison of FFTF reactivities with mechanistic feedback models in the SASSYS/SAS4A code system, and (d) the pretest calculations for the LOFWOS test series, using the new FFTF feedback models.
