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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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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.”
Milton Ash, Richard Bellman, Robert Kalaba
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 6 | Number 2 | August 1959 | Pages 152-156
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE59-A25646
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
After a high-flux thermal nuclear reactor is shut down, the concentration of fission product xenon may rise for many hours as a result of the decay of fission product iodine into Xe135. This results in reactor poisoning and may, with consequent loss of efficiency, postpone the time at which the reactor may be restarted. This poisoning may be minimized by carefully controlling the rate at which the neutron flux is decreased during the shut-down operation. The determination of optimal control in this situation leads to some nonclassical problems in the calculus of variations. The aim of this paper is to show how they can be treated by the functional equation technique of dynamic programming. The methods we present rely upon the use of high-speed digital computers with large memories. The method automatically produces a valuable parameter study and results in stable designs.
