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Wednesday, Jan. 2

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

Thursday, Jan. 3

THERE WILL BE NO THEORETICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

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Feature

Magnets in Fermilab storage ready for use in future projects

The Tagged Photon Lab, once a fixed-target experimental building, is now one of the two major warehouses used for storing magnets. Photo: Fermilab

Those who work with particle beams know that beams have more than one dimension. They are formed to have an hourglass shape here, to flatten to a ribbon there, or to barrel around a curve at just the right width.

The beams' primary shapers and guides are magnets, and over more than 40 years of developing magnets for diverse projects, Fermilab has accumulated an impressive array of them. Magnets that have completed their original service are stored in one of two warehouses on site. And though they've been retired, they've not outlived their usefulness.

"Some of these magnets are 35, 40 years old—and they're fine!" said Technical Division Deputy Head Dave Harding. "You never know when something is going to fill a need."

Each project's particular magnet requirements are unique, but that doesn't mean that magnets have to be produced anew every time there's a new beam requirement. A rebuilt magnet often does the job perfectly, saving energy, time and money and keeping old radioactive magnets out of expensive landfills.

Three magnets originally built about 1970 to steer beam from the Booster to the Main Ring, for example, have been modified for use in the NOvA accelerator upgrade. The Main Injector project used almost all the regular quadrupole magnets from the Main Ring, along with every single one of the Main Ring's dipole corrector and quadrupole corrector magnets.

With the wide variety of magnets Fermilab has produced over the decades, there are plenty to choose from. TD's Quality and Materials Department tracks roughly 400 types of magnets, said Jamie Blowers, department head. More than 4,000 magnets are currently installed in the lab's accelerators and beamlines.

They run the gamut: dipole, quadrupole, sextupole and octupole magnets fill shelves and pallets throughout the warehouses. Each may be a superconducting, normal-conducting or permanent magnet. Some are the size of a toaster; others are as long as a train car and weigh tens of tons.

TD also maintains the pool of spare magnets in support of accelerator operations. When a spare is needed—even if it's that multi-ton magnet sitting at the bottom of a stack—Blowers' team delivers it immediately.

"It's a 24-7 deal," Blowers said. "It happens at least once a year—a magnet breaks at midnight, and someone's on call to deliver a new one."

As Fermilab expands its scientific program into the Intensity Frontier, many of these legacy components from earlier times will find themselves steering beam once more to uncover new science.

Leah Hesla

These dipole magnets in the Magnet Storage Building once steered Main Ring beam. The second magnet from the top was reworked for the NuMI beamline and now serves as a spare. The rest await new assignments. Photo: Fermilab
University Profile

University of Colorado
at Boulder

NAME:
University of Colorado at Boulder

HOME TOWN:
Boulder, Colo.

MASCOT:
Buffaloes

COLORS:
Silver and gold

COLLABORATING AT FERMILAB SINCE:
mid-1970s

WORLDWIDE PARTICLE PHYSICS COLLABORATIONS:
CMS, FOCUS, KTeV, LBNE, MiniBooNE, NA61 (CERN), RD-42 (CERN), SeaQuest, T2K (J-PARC), T992

NUMBER OF SCIENTISTS AND STUDENTS INVOLVED:
10 faculty, five postdocs, five grad students

PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH FOCUS:
We are primarily focused on CMS, RD-42 (diamond detector R&D) and T2K at present, with a continuing effort on MiniBooNE and a growing involvement on LBNE. Two of our theorists collaborate with Fermilab on lattice calculations.

WHAT SETS PARTICLE PHYSICS AT CU APART?
We have one of the larger university-based computing farms in HEP. On the technical side, we have the facilities and technical ability to build large components of experiments (most recently focusing horns for T2K) as well as perform detector R&D.

FUNDING AGENCIES:
DOE

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From FESS

Energy savings performance contract

Randy Ortgiesen

Randy Ortgiesen, head of the Facilities Engineering Services Section, wrote this column.

The laboratory is once again supporting a DOE Energy Savings Performance Contract and has completed participation in the field work for the first phase, called a Preliminary Assessment.

An ESPC is a vehicle through which a competitively selected energy services company (ESCo) provides an assessment of energy savings opportunities in various building and utility systems. The ESPC provides funding to take advantage of selected opportunities for creating real savings for the laboratory, and the initial investment is paid back through the contract as well. During the payback period, the contractor performs a measurement and verification evaluation to make sure the savings continue to be achieved based on the agreed upon baseline. After the payback period, the laboratory retains the savings. Not only does the program help meet DOE's energy and water reduction goals, but the new equipment purchased through the contract also improves system reliability and thus helps fulfill the laboratory's mission.

Fermilab has acquired quite a bit of experience over the last decade-and-a-half working with the Fermi Site Office to successfully implement these types of initiatives and has executed over $60 million in contracts, the vast majority of which have already been paid back. During October and November, the selected ESCo, Schneider Electric's Energy Solutions group, completed field work to assess 587 sites at the laboratory. The teams were very complimentary of the laboratory building and facility managers for hosting and coordinating this huge effort.

A big "Well done!" goes to all Fermilab building managers for helping to coordinate the effort of multiple teams of engineers. The teams looked at everything from traditional measures such as light bulbs to more complex items, including chiller plants and data centers. The formal delivery of the Preliminary Assessment to the Fermi Site Office is scheduled for late January, after which a thorough review will be completed to decide which measures may be further evaluated during the subsequent phase, called the Investment Grade Audit.

Photo of the Day

Good morning

Mike McGee, AD, took this photo of a December sunrise near the AZero building.
Milestone

NOvA far-detector building earns firm engineering award

The project engineering firm for the NOvA Far-Detector Building recently received an Honor Award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of Illinois. The award honors the year's most outstanding engineering accomplishments.

The engineering firm, Burns & McDonnell Engineering Company in Downers Grove, Ill., is now eligible for ACEC's national Engineering Excellence Award competition.

In the News

Physics labs face fiscal fireworks

From USA Today, Dec. 31, 2012

The recipe for an atom smasher requires atoms, physicists, their machines and money. And money, it turns out, is the hardest part of the ingredient list to supply.

As Congress squabbles over millionaires' tax rates this weekend, a quieter collision is playing out in one part of the U.S. scientific enterprise, three U.S. labs that look at the humblest element of the universe, the atom.

On Jan. 7, a Department of Energy advisory panel headed by Texas A&M physicist Robert Tribble will weigh in on the future of three facilities that right now are the reason the USA leads the world in nuclear physics research. Nuclear physicists seek to understand how the innards of atoms, such as protons and neutrons, interact with each other. The field is essential to nuclear power and nuclear weapons, as well as our basic understanding of nature.

Read more
In the News

Breakthrough of the Year: the discovery of the Higgs boson

From Science, Dec. 21, 2012

No recent scientific advance has generated more hoopla than this one. On 4 July, researchers working with the world's biggest atom smasher—the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland—announced that they had spotted a particle that appears to be the long-sought Higgs boson, the last missing piece in physicists' standard model of fundamental particles and forces. The seminar at which the results were presented turned into a media circus, and the news captured the imagination of people around the world. "[H]appy 'god particle' day," tweeted will.i.am, the singer for pop group The Black Eyed Peas, to his 4 million Twitter followers.

Read more
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January 2013 timecards and float holiday

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