Accelerating Structures Lab on the home run

Two storey building for NCBJ Accelerating Structures Lab offers about 1,400 sq. metres of modern lab space. Modern and attractive architecture of the building on one hand, and its special construction adapted to special needs of scientists are its largest advantages. High vacuum labs, electron beam sources lab, ionisation chambers labs, and X-ray testing lab will be localised on the ground floor. Designers’ offices (mechanical systems, electrical systems, electronic circuits, IT systems) will take the first floor.

Labs will be equipped with many devices necessary to guarantee the highest work quality, including a microplasma welder, a Faraday cage with high voltage modulator, a modern oven for vacuum soldering.

Some premises within the Accelerating Structures Lab building will be restricted access labs and ISO5 class high cleanliness labs. Labs will be equipped with a closed loop air conditioning system. High Vacuum Lab will be equipped with oil-less pumps meeting the most stringent environment protection requirements.

The new building will soon be a workplace for more than 50 specialists in such fields as broadly understood physics of high and low energies, micowaves, mechanics and computer sciences. A part of the building will be occupied by R&D team responsible for design of accelerator mechanical/electronic/control systems.

Two radiation shielded vaults with their respective control rooms have been erected next to the main building. Their concrete walls are as much as three metres thick, access is provided by automatically-controlled shield doors weighing almost four tonnes. The vaults can be used to safely test accelerators that generate electron beams of energy as high as 20 MeV, a few times higher than maximum energy of any accelerator so-far developed in NCBJ.

What scientists employed in the Accelerating Structures Lab will be doing? Well, the so-far occupied premises made possible to develop linear electron accelerators of maximum energy of up to about  6 MeV. So-far NCBJ manufactured accelerators controlled by sophisticated electronic systems may perform many sophisticated irradiations, while their relative simple construction means high reliability and an attractive, low price. However, such electron beams cover only about 60% of demand in radiotherapy.  Multi-energy accelerators of maximum energy up to 15 MeV will be the next step to be taken by NCBJ HITEC Nuclear Equipment Division.

Besides, results of works conducted in NCBJ Accelerating Structures Lab find their applications not only in medicine. Some radiographic accelerators are developed for industrial applications, some other – for border scanners that help to increase security of our country.

The modern building will serve also a very advanced physics, which research on antimatter undoubtedly is: an electron accelerator for the GBAR experiment to be run in CERN (Geneva) is to be developed here.

Infrastructure enabling development of state-of-the-art accelerators was built in NCBJ within the „Development of Ionizing Radiation-Based Technologies in NCBJ Świerk” project. The project covered the infrastructure and purchase of special equipment for four selected NCBJ Labs. The Accelerating Structures Lab received almost 8 million PLN to construct a new building with bunkers and more than 4 million PLN to modernize and supplement the equipment. The project was co-financed by European Regional Development Fund within the framework of the Regional Operational Programme of the Mazovian Province for 2007-2013 (Priority I: Creating conditions for development of innovation potential and entrepreneurship in Mazovia, Measure 1.1: Strengthening the R&D sector)