SuperHilac Shuts down after 35 Years
Reprinted from the LBL Currents Friday January 8 ,1993
At 10:32 on December 23,1992 Al Ghiroso turned off the SuperHilac for the last time. Ray Thatcher the accelerator operator and Scott Stricklin the Electronic Technician responsible for the actual shutdown look on. Ghiroso had been involved for many years in research at the facility, where he and his team members discovered five "manmade' or Tran uranium elements. He also conceived the idea for operating the SuperHilac and the Bevatron in tandum,combining the heavy-ion capability of the former with the high energy capability of the latter.
Present at the SuperHilac shutdown were -bottom row-Stan Boyle,retired operator and computer specilist,Ghiroso,Mike Nitschke a Nuclear Science division Researcher and a major user of the SuperHilac,Accelerator Operator Thatcher,-top row-Ben Feinberg,Bevalac Operations program head, James Symons, director of the Nuclear Science Division, Harvey Gould, a long time SuperHilac and Bevatron user, Tom Gimple,SuperHilac Operator, Don Riemers,LBL plant maintenance technician,Stricklin,and Mike Casey Electronics Technician.
The HILAC Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator was built in 1957 and a sister machine was built at Yale were the first machines in the country with the specific job of accelerating ions. Over the years the HILAC was continually improved, then rebuilt in 1972 as the SuperHilac more powerful machine. In 1974 the SuperHilac and the Bevatron were linked as the Bevalac. Ions accelerated at the SuperHilac were passed through a transfer line where they were accelerated to nearly the speed of light. With the later modifications in the early 1980's the Bevalac became the only machine in the world that was capable of accelerating all of the elements in the periodic table up to and including Uranium, to relativistic energies. For its last run, the SuperHilac accelerated a Silicon beam for a biology experiment at the Bevatron.