NSLS-II Anticipates Expected Needs of Its User Community
The National Synchrotron Light Source II is scheduled to start full operations in June 2015.Staff members are working on final engineering design documents, which will be used to build the facility. After they are reviewed, the project expects to receive approval of CD-3, which will allow construction to begin. By early 2009, the project expects to awarda $200 million contract for ring construction.
Steve Dierker, Associate Laboratory Director of Light Sources who heads the project, said that the NSLS upgrade has been seriously underway for the past six years. About six years from now, he said, beam will be available to the beamlines.
Some changes to the facility design have included increases in beam height, tunnel height, and in the experimental floor’s radial width, as well as the addition of spaces between the laboratory office buildings to allow for the extension of beamlines outside of the storage ring. The current design accommodates nine of these extra-long beamlines, each up to several hundred meters long.
Dierker said there is a need for the project team to develop a “coherent, facility-wide plan that is responsive to the needs of the various user communities.” Input from the first NSLS-II User Workshop, held in July 2007, and a series of planning workshops held with the NSLS earlier this year, will be used to meet that goal.
“One clear message was the advantages, both scientific and technical, to be gained by appropriately combining communities with similar requirements,” Dierker said. The white papers produced at the workshops also show why it is important for careful strategic planning, as the total number of beamlines requested greatly exceeds the number of ports that will be available at NSLS-II.
“We need to prioritize among competing demands and weigh new ideas versus the needs required for the continuation of existing communities served well by NSLS,” Dierker said.
