|
|
European Laboratory for Particle Physics |
Did you also notice the following: The number of projects proposed is inversely proportional to the money available. This means that there are actually many new projects at CERN not counting the LHC among them as this is now an old project. Carlo Rubbia's TOF neutron experiment and our DG's favourite, the neutrino beam to the Grand Sasso (NGS), wait for their money whilst the new CLIC test facility (CTF3) will probably continue to be financed with the Electron Laboratory for Europe (ELFE) and the neutrino factory being still in their early paper form.
The biggest news at CERN, however, since last week is that LEP not only reached its design energy of 100 GeV per beam but is also capable to sustain that operation for long periods of physics. Some of the superconducting accelerating cavities have been pushed up to 9 MV/m and in order to increase the energy even further, old copper cavities will in addition be reintroduced into the machine. Anticipating this development and due to the fact that CERN's present authorization to operate LEP is only valid up to 100 GeV per beam RP Group contributed greatly to an addendum to the initial LEP safety report: "Augmentation de l'énergie du LEP à 105 GeV". This report is now in Paris with the French Authorities for approval.
For CERN the key question when going beyond 100 GeV is whether certain components in the machine will not be killed prematurely by synchrotron radiation whereas for the French Authorities the question is rather whether the high energy tail of the synchrotron radiation spectrum will contribute to the activation of the machine. As already pointed out in the past, the activity of the machine parts is a critical issue in France as far as the decommissioning and the dismantling of LEP is concerned. However, if any, the most likely activation path is through beam losses. Both issues are addressed in a paper that will be given at the Ninth International Conference on Radiation Shielding (ICRS-9) in Tsukuba: Induced Activity Calculations in View of the Large Electron Positron Collider Decommissioning by A. Fassò, M. Höfert, A. Leuschner, M. Silari, G. R. Stevenson, L. Ulrici and S. Ye .
RP Group finished work on two other important documents for CERN's future. The report on the decommissioning and the dismantling of LEP: "Démontage du LEP en vue de l'installation du LHC" is now with the editor whilst the "Rapport préliminaire de Sûreté du LHC" is already in Paris.
Is it coincidence that with me preparing for retirement so many big issues come to an end? Nobody should worry, new challenges are already appearing at the horizon (see above). Nevertheless, before leaving CERN I still have a full program in front of me, last not least to introduce my successor Dr. Hans Menzel into his new job. Many of you know Hans either as the father of one of the few operational TEPCs, the HANDY, or as the man everybody likes in his key position in Brussels assuring that European money (ECUs and now EUROs) for research in radiation protection are well spent. I have known Hans for many years and became particularly well acquainted with him in spring of 1990 (remember, the Berlin wall fell in fall 1989) when, attending a Symposium on radiation protection in the then still existing GDR, we shared a room in a small castle near Dresden. He will start at CERN on 1 November and take over the function as RP-Group leader when we turn the page of the millennium.
Otherwise I am quite busy these days with the issue of radioactive material generated by accelerators and what to do with the tons of radioactive waste. If some laboratories can still stick their heads into the sand we at CERN are no longer allowed to do this as the Authorities of the two host states became aware of the "heavy" heritage the Organization will leave behind surely, although hopefully only in the long future. We see strong "recommendations" concerning the radioactive waste stored on site imposed on us and our greatest worry is that accelerators, with the radioactivity they generate, are not put in the same basket as nuclear power.
I have prepared together with Dr. Doris Forkel-Wirth, one of my busiest section leaders, two conference papers addressing two different facets of the waste problem: "On the Release of Radioactive Material Produced at High-Energy Accelerators" to be presented at the 2nd International Symposium on "Release of Radioactive Material from Regulatory Control" in Hamburg in November and "Sur la gestion des déchets non nucléaires de faible radioactivité " to be presented at the 20ème Congrès de L'ATSR "Radioprotection et écologie" in Paris in December. I shall also trouble the community of health physicists working around accelerators with the waste issue at the IRPA10 Conference next year in May.