The East Area facility, which hosts all the primary area, the secondary beamlines, the CLOUD experiment, the IRRAD and CHARM facilities, as well as the T09 and T10 test beam areas, has just been renovated.
The main goal of this upgrade was to ensure the long-term operation of the PS East Area experimental area facility. Practically, this has been achieved by implementing a new beamline layout, a new cycled powering scheme, and thoroughly refurbishing the associated infrastructure.
To be able to change from a continuous to a pulsed power supply, the yokes of the magnets needed to be laminated. In addition, over the last years of operation, maintainability of the magnets had been a critical issue, mainly because of long cooldown and repair times and the lack of spares for some magnet families. These two reasons drove the complete renovation of the magnets in order to install new magnets with laminated yokes and of fewer families.
In fact, reducing the energy consumption of the facility had also been a key point in the launching of the East Area Renovation project. The new beamlines consist of 58 magnets of 12 different types powered by 61 power converters. A significant part of this energy saving is obtained by using a cycling magnet current, hence recovering and storing the magnet energy after each operation. The powering solution is based on the SIRIUS (power System for rapId Regulation with Internal controlled Unit of energy Storage) power converter family, which had been developed especially for Accelerator Transfer Line applications and performs magnet energy recovery after each magnetic cycle.
Concerning maintainability of the remaining equipment, the same approach was used, therefore components such as beam stoppers or collimators have been replaced with standard equipment as well as beam instrumentation modernized with new beam profile monitors and scintillating fibres. Control of the beamline has been improved with the implementation of a magnet protection system, remote control of the vacuum system, and remotely controlled collimators.
Major refurbishment and new installation activities have also taken place in Building 157, the East Hall, Building 352, housing the F61 and F62 beamlines, and in Building 251, where the new SIRIUS power converters are located. Indeed, the new technology required active air and water cooling systems, which were not available in the previous plant.
Undoubtedly the upgrade turned out to be a unique opportunity to bring the facility up to the modern safety standards in terms of radioprotection by implementing dynamic air confinement in the primary area and separating the cooling circuits between activated and non-activated water. On the conventional safety side, the safe operation of the new power converters, which include large energy storage capacitors, and the compliance to ATmosphere EXplosible regulations for the design of the new gas distribution system prevailed.
With the upgrade works now over, and as the beams return to the accelerator complex, the East Area’s experiments are taking physics measurements again and the facility’s central role in the modern physics landscape has been restored.
It is now time to celebrate this great achievement !
Watch a time-lapse video condensing two years of the East Area renovations into two minutes below: This video is available on CDS. (Video: CERN)
Please note : A Swiss or EU-issued COVID certificate will be mandatory to attend the Event. For those having no Covid Certificate, a negative test of less than 48h will be required (Book an appointment :Plamed (cern.ch)).
