Kamran Vaziri and Don Cossairt
The tritium in Indian Creek was discovered in mid-November in our regular environmental sampling program. The measurement was confirmed and many more measurements are being taken. We have understood how the water movement within the laboratory's ponds coupled with a leaky pipe could have led to this level of tritium in Indian Creek. While the levels are well below regulatory standards, we want to make them as small as possible. We are taking measures to bring Indian Creek back to a level of tritium so low that it cannot be detected. Even though it was a very small release, it was immediately announced to our neighboring communities. Meeting with Fermilab's Community Task Force on Public Participation, Director Pier Oddone emphasized the importance of transparency in communication in dealing with this discovery. "We are taking it very seriously," Oddone told the task force. "The seriousness of this kind of issue does not always correlate with the actual health hazard, but with the way the laboratory handles it." The laboratory was able to immediately stop tritiated water from entering Indian Creek, which leaves the site at the southwest corner near the Savannah subdivision.
The presence of tritium on our site is a normal result of accelerator operations. The major new source is the NuMI facility. Pumping from the NuMI tunnel brings tritiated water to the surface, protecting the underlying aquifer. The intent has been to contain the tritium from NuMI operations within the industrial cooling water system and the surface waters of the laboratory. We believe that leakage from these surface waters was feeding Indian Creek. This leakage was fixed.
The Tevatron Collider ended 2005 by setting a new integrated luminosity record for the week of December 26, producing 24.7 pb-1 in one week. That is about one-seventh of the entire luminosity produced during Run I, which lasted 3.5 years (1992 to 1996). Tevatron also broke its own previous world initial luminosity record, with a new average of 171.85E30/cm2/sec.
The Tevatron was not the only Olympian at Fermilab: the Antiproton Source Department was able to raise it antiproton production capacity from 16 mA/hr in early fall to about 21 mA/hr in December. The Recycler broke its previous antiproton stash size from 370.2E10 set in January to 436.0E10 just before the February 27 shutdown.
Fermilab's 2006 accelerator shutdown started on February 27. Accelerator upgrades during the current shutdown include the installation of four new collimators and seven upgraded magnets in the main injector and magnet upgrades and relocation of the beam absorber in the booster. As usual, much work needs to be done and schedules are tight. The Accelerator Division again employed careful planning to guide the activities of some 600 workers, about half of whom will need to access underground accelerator enclosures sometime during the shutdown. According to Senior Safety Officer John Anderson, electricity is a hazard that deserves special attention. We will be doing a lot of electrical work during the shutdown. Lock-out/tag-out (LOTO) will be a major tool for dealing with this hazard.
In his pre-shutdown talk, the accelerator division head described his expectations regarding environment, safety, and health (ES&H). Key among these is his view of the importance of safety. If the job must be done, then we must find a safe way to do it.