NuMI's very own MacGyver:

Keith Anderson

Deep in concentration, Keith Anderson works on a project for NuMI.

When you’re working on equipment for the world’s first 500- mile neutrino beam, there’s no handbook. So for Keith Anderson, senior technical aide for the NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) support group, creativity is key.

“I put things together and then I fix them when they’re broken,” Anderson said. “It’s just using a wrench for the most part, until there’s a failure. Then you have to use some ingenuity.”

Anderson joined Fermilab in 2002 and worked for three years as a contractor before he was hired as a full-time technician. Formerly a tank mechanic in the U.S. Army, he had experience working with heavy, sophisticated equipment that fit in well with neutrino experiments.

“I was just looking for a change of pace,” Anderson said. “Being a truck mechanic is the same thing day in, day out – and you come home every day smelling of diesel fuel. Personally, I like coming up with new ideas.”

NuMI provides plenty of opportunities for innovation. When the support group had to investigate a decay pipe in a high-energy area, it devised a plan to create a periscope to look down into the dark tunnel. Anderson did much of the periscope’s design, including its light source: a remote-controlled Caterpillar truck from Toys R’ Us. Anderson took the truck home at night and spent weeks fitting it with a complex array of LED lights to illuminate the pipe.

“Keith has a perfect blend of talent and creativity,” said engineer Kris Anderson, NuMI beams mechanical support group leader. “He’ll uncover a problem and call me, already with some solutions in mind.”
 Because of its scale, constructing and repairing the NuMI equipment is a learn-as-you-go experience. Even simple things, such as shipping a piece of hardware, often require a great deal of resourcefulness. Million dollar hardware requires specialized packaging, and Anderson is often the one to engineer and construct it.

“When he’s done, it’s like Norm Abram from ‘This Old House’ built the thing,” Kris Anderson said.

 “Finding better ways of doing stuff, that’s just something I like,” Keith Anderson said. “Everything’s challenging because none of this has ever been done before. We’re always improving.”

- Sara Reardon

New employees - September 7

First row, from left: Garry Tooley, Nihad Tanovic, Meghan Czamanski, Evgeny Toropov, Dan Curatolo, Abhishek Deshpande and Zachary Stauber. Second row from left: Sara Reardon, Bruce Squires, Hengbao Zeng, Kyle Knoepfel and Tyler Parsons.

Photographer crosses globe to capture art of high-energy physics

SNO, SNOLab, Ontario, 2009

From ATLAS to Antarctica, photographer Stanley Greenberg has travelled the world in a high-energy treasure hunt for the shapes of physics. In a book of photographs to be published next year, Greenberg will show the results of his five-year photography tour of detectors and accelerators across the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Japan and Antarctica.

The book’s title, “Time Machines,” refers to the experiments’ efforts to recreate the period just after the big bang. Yet the photos themselves create something of a time warp effect: the most high-tech equipment in the world shot on black and white film.

Greenberg, who has already published two photography books on New York City’s infrastructure and architecture under construction around the country, was impressed by the structural forms and large spaces that comprise detectors.

“It’s an extra feature that there’s all this incredible research going on,” he said.

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MIT Study Offers New Perspectives on Nuclear Energy

From The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, Oct. 29, 2010

An interdisciplinary MIT study offers important new perspectives on many of the long-running issues surrounding the future utilization of nuclear energy in the United States.  In several areas, the report provides the basis for a fundamental rethinking of long-held assumptions about reactor fuel, reactor design, and the disposition of spent nuclear fuel.

“The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” is the latest of three related studies on nuclear energy issued by MIT.  The study group’s ten members included Mujid Kazimi and Ernest Moniz as the co-chairs and Charles Forsberg as the executive director.  Additional assistance was provided by three contributing authors, eight student research assistants, and a thirteen member advisory committee.  The report’s first chapter provides the study’s overview, conclusions, and recommendations and was released last month; the other ten chapters will be released before the end of the year.  Some of the key findings and recommendations from this chapter follow.

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