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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.”
S. B. Gunst, J. C. Connor, D. E. Conway
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 58 | Number 4 | December 1975 | Pages 387-413
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE75-A26795
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Samples of 233U and of natural thorium have been irradiated in high neutron-flux facilities, in both soft and hard neutron spectra, and for both short and long exposure times. Included are exposures resulting in depletions of more than 90% of the 233U in the fissile material and burnups of more than 30 000 MWd/MT in the fertile material. Postirradiation mass analyses of the total and the isotopic uranium, of 137Cs, and of the neodymium isotopes generally agree within a few percent with corresponding calculations based on measured exposure histories. Reactivity measurements between irradiation cycles provide experimental results for the fissile content and fission-product poisoning as functions of both irradiation and cooling time. Corresponding results obtained from calculated concentrations agree with measurements to ∼1% for the fissile content and 3% for the effective one-group fission-product poison cross section. However, fission-product poison cross sections in two energy groups (thermal and epithermal) exhibit differences between measurement and calculation that are believed to be attributable to a lack of adequate information on important fission products in the literature. Experimental results for transient absorbers in irradiated 233U give at least 20 000 b for the neutron absorption resonance integral of 149Pm. This is a factor of 15 higher than that obtained by a 1/v extrapolation of the thermal cross section. For transient 135Xe, the measured absorption is 7.5% higher than that calculated using ENDF/B-IV data. Information is also provided concerning such matters as fission yields and neutron absorption of neodymium isotopes, the existence of significant transient fission-product poisons other than 135Xe and 149Sm, and the shielding of 233U by 232Th. Such shielding suggests the need for a change in the energy dependence of the 232Th thermal-neutron cross section.
