Brookhaven Highlights
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BNL—52110 DB88 012365 BROOKHAVEN HIGHLIGHTS MASTER Brookhaven National Laboratory Upton, Long Island, New York 11973 Brookhaven National Laboratory is operated by Associated Universities, Inc.. under contract No. DE-AC02-76CH00016 with the United States Department of Energy. Brookhaven is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Report No. BNL 52110. DOE/OSTI-4500-lNTERIM 2, distribution categories UC-13 and UC-500 — general, miscellaneous and progress reports (nuclear and nonnuclear). Printed in the United States of America. Available from the National Technical Infor- mation Service. U.S Department of Commerce, 5285 Port Royal Road. Springfield, VA 22161. NTIS price codes: printed copy — A05, microfiche copy — A01. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. 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Inc.. using non-Department of Energy funds. Contents 2 A Word About BNL 62 Biology Department 62 A Golden Opportunity 4 Brookhaven Today 64 Mismatch Repair — Nature's Remedy for Mistakes 6 The National Synchrotron Light Source: 66 Beaming In on Structural Biology The Best and the Brightest 68 Applied Mathematics Department 12 The Big Machines 68 The Computer Connection 14 Alternating Gradient Synchrotron Department 70 Reactor Division 14 Heavy Ions — A New Probe for the AGS 70 The HFBR — A Premier Source of Neutrons 16 SEB — The Multipurpose Beam 18 A Boost for Physics 72 Safety and Environmental Protection Division 72 Getting (he Dose Down 20 Accelerator Development Department 20 The Promise of RHIC 74 Instrumentation Division 22 The AGS Gets a Boost 24 Super Magnets for a Super Collider 74 Tiny Photocell With Mighty Potential 26 Physics Department 76 General and Administrative 26 In Search of a Rare Event 28 The New Superconductors: Why Do They Work? 78 Financial Report 30 Death of a Star 79 Meetings 32 Department of Nuclear Energy 32 Being Prepared 80 Honors 34 Safety in Computer Codes 36 Safe Disposal of High-Level Nuclear Waste 82 Organization 38 Department of Applied Science 38 Saving Energy Saves Dollars 40 A Burning Question 42 PFTs: Detective Gases 44 National Synchrotron Light Source Department 44 In Synch With the New Superconductors 46 At the Micron Level — 3-D Images 48 Holography — The View From the Light Source 50 Chemistry Department 50 Probing Transient Molecules 52 High Pressure Work on Alkanes 54 Hot Oxygen Atoms Yield New Chemistry 56 Medical Department 56 Breakthrough in Testing for Lead Toxicity 58 To Better the Odds Against Cancer 60 Magic Bullets Find Their Target A Word About BNL uring the years 1986 and 1987, Brookhaven National DLaboratory' (BNL) and Asso- ciated Universities. Inc. (AUI) cele- brated the fortieth anniversaries of both their foundings and their long association. AUI was formed in 1946 by a group of nine universities, for the purpose of establishing and managing a laboratory in the Northeast that would help ensure the continued progress of nuclear science in peace- The UNI. site time. In less than a year. BNL was a Alternating Gradient Synchrotron 1947 fact. 1971 Today. AUI continues to manage BNL under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy. The nine sponsoring universities are: Colum- bia University. Cornell University. Harvard University. The Johns Hop- kins University. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University. University of Rochester and Yale University. Brookhaven is a multidisiplinary laboratory that carries out basic and applied research in the physical, biomedical and environmental Cosmotron sciences and in selected energy High Flux Beam Reactor 1952 technologies. At Brookhaven, the 1976 resources of academia and the fed- eral government are brought together to carry out research endeavors not normally within the capability of a single university. BNL is located on Long Island in New York, at Upton, the site of a former army camp where U.S. sol- diers trained during both World Wars. Now. some 3.200 civilian employees help the science go for- ward at a site that resembles a sprawling university campus. The physical plant contains about 300 buildings and other structures, sit- Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor uated on 5.265 acres of wooded National Synchrotron Light Source 1953 property. 1982 The UNI. site 1987 Brookhaven Today wo years of research are tron Light Source (NSLS). The appli- described within the pages cation potentials of these materials Tof this issue of Brookhaven in industry and science are exciting. Highlights. They put the cap on the The Laboratory participated in the Laboratory's first 40 years ... years Irvine/Michigan/Brookhaven collab- of forefront science certainly worth oration, which, over a six-second celebrating period in February 1987. observed That's just what we did in Sep- eight neutrinos that were probably tember 1987, with a two-day scien- ejected from a supernova during a tific symposium emphasizing the stellar explosion in the Greater next 40 years, and beyond. Magellanic Cloud. The observations But I believe that every year is the were made in a detector located at product of the ones that preceded it. the bottom of a 200-foot-deep Cleve- In the two years just past, we con- land salt mine and contributed to tinued to lay the groundwork for a theories about heavy element crea- future that we expect to be as impor- tion in the universe. tant and exciting as our past has President Reagan, in January been. 1987, gave his approval to the con- Much of the success of our course struction of the SSC. If approved by of action can be characterized by the Congress, this facility will be the word super, as in superconductivity, largest proton collider in the world. supernova and Superconducting Brookhaven has been involved in a Super Collider (SSC). As a multidis- collaborative effort with Fermi ciplinary laboratory, we have been National Accelerator Laboratory and very gratified to have been a major Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory on the player in these milestone scientific R**D efforts to produce machine- events. quality superconducting magnets for Brookhaven was the third institu- the SSC. tion to produce high temperature I can only wish for the SSC that it superconductors and the second to prove as reliable, productive and ver- create a material that becomes satile as the AGS has been through superconducting above 90 kelvins. its 27 years. Today, the advent of a Intensive research on these mate- program searching for the very rare rials is currently under way at the decay of K mesons is providing the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron opportunity to explore the 100- (AGS). High Flux Beam Reactor trillion-electron-volt energy domain. (HFBR) and the National Synchro- In 1986. with the commissioning of the beam transfer line connecting the AGS and the Tandem Van de Graaff, our proton accelerator took on an added dimension, as scientists began experimenting there with heavy ions generated in the Tandem. The AGS was also the focus of two ceremonies at our 40th anniversary celebration. Fittingly, the entire AGS complex was dedicated to the memory of Leland J. Haworth. BNL's second Director, who initiated the AGS proposal and saw the project through to completion. Also, ground was broken for the Accumulator- Booster accelerator, which, when completed and coupled to the AGS, will increase every aspect of the AGS physics program many times over. With the Accumulator-Booster, the AGS will be ready to serve as the injector for the accelerator we have proposed as BNL's next major project: the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). I was extremely pleased by the positive review the U.S. Depart- ment of Energy (DOE) gave the RHIC proposal in June 1987. During the last two years, many important milestones were met at the NSLS. which, as this year's spe- cial section shows, has matured into a world-class facility, where excite- ment is always in the air. Witness the pace of achievements in 1987 alone: The 200-milliampere current barrier was broken in the x-ray ring In January, the initiative to develop a compact synchrotron received its first funds in March, light came out of the first of five Phase H beam lines in May, the first spectrum of a monochromatic beam was recorded at the Laser Electron Gamma Source of the x-ray ring in June, and the Phase II expansion was dedicated in September. I was exceptionally proud of the Light Source when it was singled out in July 1986 as the host facility for 52 winners of the High School Honors Research Program sponsored by the DOE. This proved such a suc- cess. DOE asked us to repeat it in July 1987. As vital and productive as our that links BNL, 14 universities and present machines are, including the several industrial laboratories, giving NSLS and the AGS, we recognize the them access to several supercomput- need for continued research into ers across the country.