Wednesday, August 26, 1987/The Battalion/Page 3B
^ New $8 million A&M cyclotron
e to begin operations in October
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This is an aerial view of a portion of the new cyclotron being built at Texas A&M.
By Jill Kami
Reporter
Most students don’t even know
(that it exists at Texas A&M — or
/hat it is, for that matter.
But a building called The Cyclo
tron Institute, located next to the
(new Engineering Physics Building
on campus, houses a rather large
[machine called a cyclotron, which
[smashes atoms.
It is used to help scientists dis-
Icover how the nticleus of an atom
vorks and why it behaves the way it
does, said Dave Youngblood, the di-
jjrector of the Cyclotron Institute.
"We try to understand the forces
that hold the nucleus together,” he
said.
Although it is often called an
"‘atom smasher,” Youngblood said
the cyclotron actually accelerates the
nuclei of atoms at very high speeds
nearly the speed of light — and
then “smashes” them into a target.
Several atoms are accelerated in a
stream, called a beam, to hit a tar
get, he said. The target is a very thin
foil of matter, which can be any
thing from carbon to gold.
As this high speed stream of par-
|ticles passes through the target, oc-
:asionalIy one will hit the nucleus of
in atom in the foil. When the parti-
:le hits it, the nucleus is broken up
thus the name “atom smasher.”
A new cyclotron currently is be
ing built by the Institute at a cost of
about $8 million. It will have several
leaning
enviroi® 6 ]
piders a*
is anothet
flea conn*]
t the saint
infesting ik^fcd vantages over the old one,
'oungblood said.
For example, the new cyclotron
ill be able to accelerate particles
much faster than the old one, he
aid.
! “Now we will be able to accelerate
a uranium nucleus, whereas with
he inside*/ l h e present cyclotron we really can’t
Hoelscher 5 . do that,” he said,
cai to trea't' Also, the cost of operating the
H uidfliiifB Hew cyclotron will be less,
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^ how '“‘f
explaining how each cyclotron
works. A cyclotron consists of three
major components: a magnet, a ra
dio frequency system and an ion
source, he said.
“The magnet bends the particles
in a circular path so that you keep
accelerating them again and again,”
he said. “To get up to the speed you
want, you kick them a lot of times
just a little bit. You don’t hit them
once at a very high speed. The limit
of how fast you can get the particles
to go depends on how big the mag
net is that you’ve got.”
A magnet is very expensive to op
erate, he said, because it is run by an
electric current.
“It’s an electromagnet,” he said.
“The old cyclotron uses a megawatt
of electricity, which is a million
watts. This is very expensive to run.
The new cyclotron has nine times
the magnetic field of the old one,
but by using superconducting coils
— coils that have exactly zero resis
tance to electric flow — its total
power use is 20,000 watts compared
to 1 million watts.”
Pete Smelser, a cryogenics engi
neer at the institute, says the coil is
really the heart of the machine, con
sisting of 117,000 feet of supercon
ducting wire.
“The only reason the new ma
chine uses 20,000 watts of electricity
is because the coils have to be refrig
erated to a temperature of zero de
grees Kelvin, or minus 460 degrees
Fahrenheit, in order for supercon
ductivity to occur,” Smelser said.
Youngblood said the new cyclo
tron is almost finished and that it
probably will be in operation some
time in October.
The first cyclotron at A&M was
built in 1967. There was only one
other comparable cyclotron at that
time, and up through 1980, only
two others could compare, Youngb
lood said.
Only one other cyclotron will
compete with A&M’s new one, that
being at Michigan State University,
he said.
A&M also coordinates facilities
with the Japanese and the Euro
peans.
Youngblood said students at
A&M are trained in research and
the use of technology.
“This research is basic,” he said.
“It is not directed at helping any
body live better or at improving
anybody’s standard of living.”
He said the research is 20 or 30
years in front of helping people.
“We are tying to figure out how it
works,” he said, “and then maybe
we can do something with it.”
But not all research is pure re
search. There are also some practi
cal uses for present research.
The most famous of these pro
grams was run seven years ago.
“The program involved the treat
ment of human cancer with neu
trons using our cyclotron,” Youngb
lood said. “It started in 1972 and
was very successful.”
“They actually'had their patients
here,” said Bob Rogers, chief engi
neer of the Cyclotron Institute. “We
changed one of our radiation areas
so it was made a little more compa-
table for human beings.”
The patients were given two to
five eight-hour radiation treatments
per week.
“It was different for us,” Rogers
said. “It was much more demand
ing, but still, it was interesting.”
Youngblood said the patients
were brought to the institute to see
if this type of treatment might be ef
fective. This program was purely re
search, which implies learning, in
order to solve the practical problem
which exists, he said.
“When the first patients were
brought up here, clearly the re
searchers wanted to treat them and
cure them of their cancer,” Youngb
lood said. “However, these were pa
tients who were terminal. There was
no known way to cure them.
Photo by Sam Meyers
“This is a research cyclotron,
which is a versatile device. Using its
versatilities, as well as the knowl
edge of the scientists here, the re
searchers were able to fine-tune a
program to treat cancer with neu
trons.”
In 1979, a cyclotron was designed
specifically for the purpose of treat
ing cancer.
“The machine is much smaller
and much cheaper,” Youngblood
said. “It is sitting in Houston at M.D.
Anderson Hospital.”
Another example of applied re
search was in a nuclear science pro
gram conducted at the institute.
“In this program, the scientists
discovered a technique in which
they could measure the masses of
live biological molecules in a unique
way in which nobody else could,”
Youngblood said. “They could mea
sure these molecules very accu
rately.”
He said the program has now
spun off and is no longer at the in
stitute. There is now an instrument,
based on the one built at The Cyclo
tron, that is commercially marketed
for nuclear science.
In another direct applied pro
gram, Youngblood said moon rocks
were brought to the institute so
their compound content could be
analyzed.
“We used the beams from the ac
celerator to analyze the compounds
in the moon rocks,” he said. “Some
of our groups here look for trace el
ements in various things.
“We can also detect very small
amounts of contaminants in materi
als. This is important to semicon
ductor manufactors in metalsJ Small
contaminants in metal can make
them either brittle or not brittle.
“These are the kinds of programs
which go on here, along with the ba
sic research.”
The cyclotron normally runs 24
hours a day, seven days a week.
irill
.
P
jblets bee*
se,” he
e to half
o bathe 01
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