SSCNEWS, November 1993 Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory Mon, 1 Nov 1993 23:00:00 GMT Newsgroups: ssc.news SSC NEWS An electronic mail newsletter about the Superconducting Super Collider Volume 4, No. 11 November 1993 _____________________________________________________________________________ OCTOBER ON THE HILL: BEGINNING OF THE END The month of October was off to an auspicious start with a 57-to-42 vote on the Senate floor, on September 30, to strike down an attempt--the so-called Bumpers amendment--to kill the SSC. Two weeks later, on October 14, the Energy and Water conference committee recommended, in agreement with the Senate position on the SSC, to appropriate $640 million for the SSC for Fiscal Year 1994. Alas, that was not the end of the matter: both houses still had to approve the recommendation. Within a week (on October 19) the House voted by 282-143 to return the conference report to the House-Senate conference committee with instructions for the House conferees to maintain the House position on the SSC (that the SSC should receive $220 million for the purpose of terminating the project). A second round of conference committee deliberations on October 21 resulted in a vote to provide $640 million, to remain available until expended, for the orderly termination of the Superconducting Super Collider. The precise language of the conference report included terms and conditions as follows: (1) to the extent provided by guidelines of the Secretary of Energy, full-time employees of contractors and designated subcontractors whose employment is terminated by reason of the termination of the SSC may receive (A) up to 90 days termination pay dating from the date of termination notice, and (B) reasonable relocation expenses and assistance; (2) the Secretary of Energy shall prepare and submit a report with the recommendations to the President and the Congress containing: (a) a plan to maximize the value of the investment that has been made in the project and minimizing the loss to the United States and involved states and persons, including recommenda- tions as to the feasibility of utilizing SSC assets in whole or in part in pursuit of an international high energy physics endeavor; (b) the Secretary is authorized to consult with and use Universities Research Association and/or contractors and/or recognized experts in preparing this report and recommendations and is authorized to contract with such parties as may be appropriate in carrying out such duties; and (c) the Secretary shall release any recommendations from time to time as available, but the final report shall be submitted by July 1, 1994. On October 26, in an anticlimactic gesture, the House passed the revised Energy and Water conference report by a vote of 332-to-81. The next day the Senate concurred by 89-11. _________________________ The following two articles were prepared before the latest Washington events, and they are presented here with only minor editorial changes. HEB MAGNET UPDATE Both the Collider and High Energy Booster (HEB) are superconducting accelerators; that is, they rely on superconducting dipole and quadrupole magnets. Since the spotlight is usually on the Collider magnets, a brief summary of the HEB magnet status seems appropriate. On the one hand, the HEB dipole design is quite similar to that for the Collider dipoles; thus the nominal operating field is 6.67T corresponding to a current of 6.65kA, the magnetic length is approximately 13m, and the aperture (inner coil i.d.) is 50mm. The quadrupole has the same aperture; its operating gradient is 184T/m, and the magnet length is 1.6m. On the other hand, the HEB dipole is a bipolar, rapid-cycling magnet with a nominal current rate of rise of 70A/sec (compared to 4A/sec for the Collider dipoles). The dipole also possesses substantial curvature, or sagitta: 18.8mm. The dipoles are being designed and constructed by Westinghouse at Round Rock, Texas, and the quadrupoles are designed at Centre d' Etudes Nucleaire de Saclay in France. During the past year, 3 short (1.8-m) model dipoles were constructed by Westinghouse at their Round Rock facility and tested in the SSCL vertical magnet test facility (an MSD facility in Stoneridge Bldg. 2). A principal concern in these tests is the ramp rate quench and field dependence of the magnets. The first two magnets were wound from untreated cable (bare cable strands) and, not surprisingly, exhibited considerable quench current degradation at very high (above 100A/sec) ramp rates. Magnet no. 3 (designated DSB703) contained all-Ebanol (CuO)-insulated strands, and exhibited very good ramp rate response. Three more short models are in the pipeline, at least two of them incorporating cable with further strand-insulation configuration schemes. Meanwhile, preparations have been under way at Round Rock for the plant to commence building prototype dipoles. And quadrupoles are not far behind. A Critical Design Review for the HEB quadrupole was held at CEN/Saclay this June. Currently, a coil winding machine, as well as a coil curing press and the associated heater control unit, have been completed and installed at Saclay. The design of a collaring press has also been completed, and the RFP for its fabrication was issued. ON THE SSC EDUCATION FRONT A planning conference was recently held for an international research program in the teaching and learning of science, mathematics, engineering, and technology to be included as part of the SSC International Science Education Center. Nineteen individuals, representing classroom teachers, research scientists and engineers, university-based education researchers, and business and industry, met October 14-17 at the Melrose Hotel in Dallas. The proposed research program was to become an integral part of the Laboratory education initiatives and would have had as its goals influencing public policy, improving teaching, and promoting and supporting teaching as a profession. The education research program, a unique forum where educators and scientists could work together and think about significant issues facing education from preschool through adulthood, was to be completely integrated into the Laboratory environment, functioning alongside the scientific research program. The conference proceedings contain recommendations to DOE and the Laboratory about the program design and governance, management, and facility considerations. The conference was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science Education and Technical Information. -- M. Bardeen MTA: BIGGEST OF THEM ALL The first proton linac constructed by Luis Alvarez, a 32-MeV drift tube linac, became operational in 1948. A year earlier, construction had started near the town of Livermore on what would be the largest (and most short-lived) linac ever undertaken: the deceptively named Materials Testing Accelerator. The MTA, built by E. O. Lawrence and Alvarez, was actually a device, in conjunction with a reactor (never built), for breeding plutonium and tritium at a time when the U.S. still appeared to have an inadequate supply of uranium ore. The initial component of this monstrosity was a linac with a vacuum tank 18m in diameter and 400m long; an airplane is reputed to have flown through it! It was designed to accelerate a third of an ampere of deuterons to 500 MeV. The finished MTA was expected to yield about 2kg of neutrons per year, producing fissile fuels at a cost comparable to that from natural uranium. In the event, the machine produced a beam with great difficulty, mainly vaporizing a lot of copper bus-work. The discovery of uranium deposits in Utah in the early 1950s rendered it prematurely obsolete, and by 1952 it had been scrapped with hardly a trace remaining. DATES TO REMEMBER Nov. 15-19, 1993 American Vacuum Society: 40th National Symposium Orlando, Fl Ms. Marion Churchill, American Vacuum Society 335 East 45 St., New York, NY 10017, USA Nov. 16-18, 1993 The Third KEK Topical Conference on CP Violation: Its Implications to Particle Physics and Cosmology KEK, Tsukuba, Japan Y. Okada, Conf. Chairman, Physics Dept., KEK, 1-1 Oho, Tsukuba, 305 Japan Ph:81-298-64-5395; Fax: 81-298-64-2580 Dec. 6, 1993 Sessler Symposium on Beam Physics, Berkeley, CA Mollie Field, Conf. Coordinator, Lawrence Berkeley Lab., 1 Cyclotron Road: MS 50F, Berkeley, CA 94720 (E-mail: mofield@lbl.gov) Jan. 17-28, 1994 U.S. Particle Accelerator School (USPAS 94) Los Angeles, CA U.S. Particle Accelerator School, Fermilab, MS 125, P.O. Box 500, Batavia, IL 60510 (E-mail: uspas@fnal) Jan. 27-29, 1994 International Conference on Unified Symmetry - in the Small and in the Large, Coral Gables, FL Global Fund, Inc., 1450 Madruga Ave., Suite 301, Coral Gables, FL 33146