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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.”
C. Riffard, H. Toubon, S. Pelletier, M. Batifol, J. M. Vidal
Nuclear Technology | Volume 154 | Number 2 | May 2006 | Pages 186-193
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT06-A3727
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Before the reprocessing of low-enriched uranium (LEU) fuels at La Hague plant, the assemblies are characterized with a nondestructive assay based on neutron emission (NE) and gamma-ray emission combined with the CESAR depletion code, giving the burnup (BU) with a good accuracy (±5% within a batch of fuels from one of COGEMA-La Hague's clients). The measurements confirm the hypothesis of the safety-criticality analysis of the process, in the context of the BU credit allowance. There is a need to extend the allowance of the reprocessing plants to the case of more highly enriched LEU fuels and to the case of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels. The aim is to propose an upgraded method, valid for both LEU and MOX fuels, giving the average BU with an uncertainty lower than ±15% for MOX fuels (without any modification of the current acceptance criteria for UO2 fuel, i.e., ±15%), with a complementary module checking the operator data using the gamma-ray emission and the CESAR depletion code. In particular, the NE was interpreted with depletion calculations in the case of MOX fuels, which is the principal aim of this paper. This allows the BU determination of MOX fuels, which has been qualified during a measurement campaign in La Hague with 20 MOX assemblies. The mean BU of pressurized water reactor MOX assemblies has been determined for the first time with a maximum discrepancy of ±5% compared to the declared value.
