Nos 21-22 | 20-27 May 2013 More articles available at: http://bulletin.cern.ch Keeping the LHC in power New awards for CERN science Earlier this week, the European Physical Society (EPS) announced its High Energy and Particle Physics prizes for 2013, and I’m pleased to say that the LHC featured highly. With all that has been happening in the last few years, that’s perhaps not too surprising, but these awards nevertheless constitute a great honour for our community. (Continued on page 2) The new UPS installations. The critical safety equipment around the LHC, including the machine protection systems, In this issue is connected to Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS). In case of mains failure, the UPS systems continue to power, for a limited time, these critical systems and ensure a safe News shutdown of the accelerator. This week, work began to upgrade and replace over 100 UPS Keeping the LHC in power 1 systems in the LHC. New awards for CERN science 1 A breath of fresh air! 2 LS1 Report: It’s summer in the tunnel 3 For the LHC, even a perturbation on the Originally one was used as a backup if the CERN in “Nature” 4 Stay Fit - Have Fun - Bike To Work 5 mains is more than just an inconvenience: first system were to fail. Then, in 2009, a Volunteers: the key that opens the doors for the it often results in beam dumps and, in major upgrade on the UPS distribution was Open Days 6 some cases, requires an energy extraction made in order to provide two independent State-of-the-art technology for an extended from superconducting circuits. When and redundant power paths for the machine computing centre 6 this occurs, machine protection systems, protection systems. “Redundant powering CAS Accelerator Physics held in Erice, Italy 7 and in particular the Quench Protection is the best solution for machine protection Jekyll or Hyde? Better browse securely 7 System, must remain active to correctly but in the present configuration, a failure 8 carry out the shutdown procedure. of one of the UPS systems obliges us Official news Take note 8 With the UPS systems, 10 minutes of to shut down the accelerator,” explains Management & communication training 9 crucial power can be provided to the Vincent Chareyre, Project Leader for Technical training 10 protection systems during this critical phase. the replacement of the UPS systems. There are currently two UPS systems in The Electrical Engineering Group (EN-EL) place in each one of the 32 LHC UPS zones. will first replace the existing UPS systems with new ones based on a more robust Published by: technology. But also, an additional UPS CERN-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland Tel. + 41 22 767 35 86 Printed by: CERN Printshop system will be added to each zone. This © 2013 CERN - ISSN: Printed version: 2077-950X Electronic version: 2077-9518 (Continued on page 2) Keeping the LHC in power (Continued from page 1) third UPS system will act as a backup for the two UPS systems on the front line. (Continued from page 1) As Vincent Chareyre explains: “With the New awards for CERN science three-system layout in each one of the zones, the failure of a single UPS system The High Energy and Particle Physics will be invisible for the machine protection Prize went to the ATLAS and CMS systems. The LHC will continue to run collaborations “for the discovery of thus minimizing time lost for physics.” a Higgs boson, as predicted by the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism”, and During LS1, around 170 UPS systems to Michel Della Negra, Peter Jenni and with their batteries will be installed. As Tejinder Virdee “for their pioneering most of these are used for the LHC, there and outstanding leadership roles in is an additional logistical challenge to the making of the ATLAS and CMS the operation. “Most of the UPS zones experiments”. are located underground,” says Vincent Chareyre. “We will have to move more Among the other awards, the Young than 80 tons of electronics and more Experimental Physicist Prize went than 280 tons of batteries.” The operation The new three-system layout for the UPS systems at each zone. to Diego Martinez Santos “for his will take over one year to complete, outstanding contributions to the and will involve external contractors as trigger and commissioning of the well as members of the EN-EL Group. LHCb experiment, and the analyses leading to first evidence for the rare CERN Bulletin 0 + − decay B s → μ μ ”, while the Outreach Prize went outside Europe for the first time, to Don Lincoln of Fermilab, “for A breath of fresh air! communicating in multiple media the excitement of High Energy Physics to During LS1 the teams in charge of the cooling and ventilation systems of the high-school students and teachers, and CERN accelerators will perform maintenance work on all the equipment for the public at large”. which they are responsible. What with replacing complete systems, making The awards were completed by improvements or bringing equipment back up to scratch, their workload looks the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi like being a heavy one over the coming months. Prize, which recognizes outstanding achievement in astrophysics and CERN’s Cooling and Ventilation (CV) years of non-stop operation,” underlines cosmology, and was awarded to Art Group is responsible for the operation deputy CV group leader Serge Deleval McDonald and Yoichiro Suzuki “for and maintenance of the cooling sys- who is in charge of the work. “To achieve their outstanding contributions to the tems, pumping stations, air-conditioning this gargantuan task, our teams have been solution of the solar neutrino puzzle facilities and fluid distribution systems reinforced: some 60 contractors, under the by measuring the flux of all neutrino for CERN’s Computer Centre, the PS, the watchful eye of 15 CERN staff members, flavours from the Sun with the SNO and SPS, the LHC and their respective experi- will be performing operations in parallel Super-Kamiokande experiments”, and ment areas. All these systems are equally until the machines start up once again.” In the Gribov Medal, which went to Zohar indispensable and their maintenance is addition, some of the equipment will be Komargodski “for his deep insights into far from being a straightforward opera- consolidated to allow more regular main- the structure of the renormalization tion. During operating periods, the tech- tenance. At Points 4, 6 and 8 of the LHC, group in four-dimensional field theories nical stops are too short for any major for instance, the CV Group has installed and, in particular, his proof (with Adam maintenance work. Although the work new cooling towers to take over from the Schwimmer) of the a-theorem”. takes only a few days, such operations main cooling towers when the latter are have an impact of several weeks on the being maintained. It is worth remember- All the awards will be presented schedules of all the downstream instal- ing that, in parallel to this maintenance during the EPS-HEP conference in lations and especially on the cryogenics. work, many systems for which the CV Stockholm in July. In the meantime, I Group are responsible will continue to hope you will join me in offering warm function just as they do in a period of This is why LS1, which is a period of intense congratulations to all the recipients. operation with beam. This is for safety activity for all CERN teams working on the reasons and to allow other groups to test accelerators, is also a crucial time for the Rolf Heuer and install their equipment during LS1. CV Group. “During this long technical shut- down we have to bring all the equipment, on which no maintenance interventions Most of the cooling and ventilation equip- have been possible for three years, back up ment dates back to the commissioning to scratch and prepare it for three further of the accelerators and many items are 2 – 20 & 27.05. 2013 A breath of fresh air! (Continued from page 2) beginning to show their age. The PS ven- The underground water pumping system tilation systems, for instance, date back to will also be replaced at Point 3 of the LHC. 1957 and will be completely replaced to “This area is particularly critical for the guarantee operational reliability and to LHC infrastructure since it intersects with meet new safety standards. “Once current an underground river,” explains Serge operations to eliminate asbestos from Deleval. “The river water pumps have the PS tunnel and galleries have been to operate continuously, otherwise the completed, an entirely new ventilation tunnel would rapidly flood.” The new more system will be installed with a much more powerful pumps, of a type that is used in efficient capacity for smoke removal and, mines, will be able to remove sediments above all, for ventilation of the radioactive carried by the river water as well as the areas,” adds Serge Deleval. On the Meyrin water itself. This will avoid the CV Group Installing a fan in a cooling tower at Point 6 of the site, the demineralised water production periodically having to clean the pumping LHC in 2009. A similar exercise will be carried out in plant for all the CERN sites will be substan- area of sediments, entailing the shut- a few weeks. tially upgraded and the oldest part dis- down of the LHC, as is currently the case. mantled to increase the plant’s reliability. Anaïs Schaeffer LS1 Report: It’s summer in the tunnel A major milestone was passed this week at the PS Booster, where the first Personnel Access Door (PAD) of the new PS A breath of fresh air! Complex access system is now operational.