Most people familiar with the engineering of the Tevatron know that water is used to cool the accelerator, but few know just how much. According to Steve Krstulovich, an engineer with FESS services, more than 40 million gallons evaporate from the Main Injector and Tevatron's ring waterways and other cooling ponds each month due to the accelerator's heat and the sun's rays. That's the equivalent of 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools!
The ring ponds are a vital part of the Main Injector and Tevatron, dispersing heat into the air as water evaporates. But if these ponds become shallow their temperature creeps upward, stressing equipment and causing the accelerator to run less efficiently. "In turn, the accelerator requires more power and gives off more heat, causing water evaporation to increase and making the water level to drop even further," said Krstulovich.
Keeping enough water in the Main Injector/Tevatron ring waterways has been especially difficult this summer because of the nearly continual drought conditions. Precipitation is the main water source for the ponds, and with normal rainfall, FESS can usually keep the waterways full with some additional water pumped from the nearby Fox River and from NuMI's underground experimental hall sump discharge. But because this year's draught has been so extreme, Fermilab hasn't been able to recharge its ponds with rain and pumping from the Fox has been severely limited by low river flow. This has left the site with a water deficit it must manage through spring of 2006.
To keep the Main Injector and Tevatron functioning properly, FESS has begun transferring water from the east reservoir ponds to the western cooling ponds and ring waterways.
"During normal conditions, we can pretty much hold our own. But every fifteen years or so we see drought conditions like these, where it's a real balancing act to keep enough water in the rings," said Krstulovich. "The FESS duty mechanics and electricians have done an outstanding job using the new water mains installed by ComEd in the UIP utility corridor two years ago to transfer water efficiently from one end of the site to the other."
"We're all pushing together to keep the run going," Krstulovich continued. "We want to shut down on our own terms, not Mother Nature's."
One unexpected perk of the water transfer has been a sharp increase in bird sightings. Removing much of the water from Lake Law, just south of the Fermilab Village, has created the type of beach-like conditions that birds rare to this area crave.
"Due to marshlands drying up west of Batavia, bird watchers report seeing species of birds near Lake Law and AE Sea that haven't been sighted on Fermilab property in a long, long time," said Krstulovich.
—Kelen Tuttle
