Kevin Brown
Research Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Intellectual Neighborhoods
Research Focus
Life-cycle risk evaluation, model integration, and waste management issues related to proposed advanced nuclear fuel cycles and cementitious barriers for nuclear applications.
Biography
Kevin Brown is Senior Research Scientist in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University. His research has been supported by the multi-university Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Evaluation (CRESP). Dr. Brown’s current research focuses on life-cycle risk evaluation, model integration, and waste management issues related to proposed advanced nuclear fuel cycles and cementitious barriers for nuclear applications.
Between 1986 and 2002 at the Savannah River Laboratory, he was recognized as a DOE Complex-wide authority in process and product control for high-level waste vitrification. His activities supporting the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) included: 1) optimizing waste loading, 2) modeling critical properties, 3) managing uncertainties, and 4) supporting variability studies and waste form acceptance. He served a similar role across the DOE Complex supporting vitrification projects at Idaho, Hanford, and West Valley.
Dr. Brown spent 2002-2003 at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria where he estimated potential transboundary radiation doses resulting from hypothetical accidents at Russian Pacific Fleet sites. They were the first such studies known in the West.
In 2009 Dr. Brown was a member of the External
Technical Review Team chartered by DOE-HQ to evaluate the system-level modeling
and simulation tools in support of Savannah River Site and Office of River
Protection liquid waste processing and disposal. In 2010 and 2011 Dr. Brown
participated on the Tank Waste Subcommittee of the DOE Environmental Management
Advisory Board (EMAB) charted to provide independent technical reviews of
liquid waste capital and operations projects related to DOE-EM’s tank waste cleanup
program at major DOE Sites. He participated in Construction Project Reviews for
the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant in 2011 and 2013 and
the Savannah River Salt Waste Processing Facility in 2011 through 2015. In 2011
and 2012, Dr. Brown applied the model developed by CRESP to prioritize
remediation and associated projects at DOE sites to Melton Valley, Experimental
Molten Salt Reactor Experiment, East Tennessee Technology Park, and Bear Creek
Burial Grounds at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.