SciBooNE wins DOE-wide award for pollution prevention

Camillo Mariani (top) and Lucio Ludovici (middle), both from University of Rome, La Sapienza, and Chris Richardson and John Cornele, both of Fermilab, install re-used electromagnetic calorimeter modules into an element of the SciBooNE experiment.

The SciBooNE experiment, which is tucked away in a small cement building no larger than a commercial elevator shaft, recently stood out in the national spotlight. Federal officials recently named SciBooNE a recipient of a DOE-wide Pollution Prevention Star (P2 Star) Award for its reuse of existing materials.

"This shows that the laboratory is making the most efficient use of the resources that are available to it, and is a testament to the resourcefulness of science laboratories to make the most of materials," said Eric Mieland, Fermilab's recycling coordinator. "We now think about the full-circle impact, rather than just the front end. We're interested in what happens when we're done with the project."

SciBooNE, which measures the probability that neutrinos interact with matter, was put together using recycled detector systems from across the world and material scrounged from the Fermilab site.

The experiment received recognition as a DOE Office of Science Noteworthy Practice and a pollution prevention model in January. Mieland was pleasantly surprised that the project continued up the award chain. The P2 Star award is the highest pollution prevention award given by DOE, and only four are awarded annually. Winning the DOE award makes SciBooNE a contender for the nation's highest pollution prevention honor, the White House Closing-the-Circle Award. An announcement of nationally-selected winners will occur later this month.

"The PPD SciBooNE effort is special because the team coordinated on both a local and a global scale to reuse materials, avoid waste and cut costs. Environmentally speaking, the ripple effect of such planning and thinking can be huge. Congratulations to everyone involved!" said DOE environmental scientist Sally Arnold.

SciBooNE's project head Rick Tesarek and spokespersons Morgan Wascko and Tsuyoshi Nakaya estimate that 70 percent of the material and equipment in the project had been used previously. Without reusing existing materials, the experiment would have cost $4.5 million. Instead, it cost $1.2 million. Continuing the recycling chain, many of the materials used in SciBooNE will end up in future experiments.

Read more about SciBooNE's recycled elements and previous award here.

--Rhianna Wisniewski

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