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Accelerator Worth
Name: Kimbree
Status: student
Age: 18
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1999
Question:
I am a senior in high school and am debating about
partical accelerators in my CWP class. I was wondering if you could help
me with this. I am taking the stance that particle accelerators are
valuable and worth the amount of money that they cost. If you have any
info on the information that accelerators provide us with, their costs,
and their impact on the enviornment. Thank you so much for your time and
consideration.
Replies:
I hope my colleagues here at Argonne National Lab will also follow up on
this question, but here is my opinion: we must have these accelerators to
do the basic science that is required to understand our world and better our
society. To name a just a couple of examples, particle accelerators are
needed to provide the production of neutron and x-rays that can be used to
study the molecular and atomic structure of materials. In order to better
understand and produce materials (such as superconductors, polymers, etc.),
we need to understand how they are assembled and interact on an atomic
scale. This can only be done with x-rays and neutrons. Two facilities here
at ANL that use accelerators are the Advanced Photon Source (APS) and the
Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS). Hundreds of studies are done year
round at these facilities to understand just what I have mentioned. Go to
ANL home page to get a jumping off point to see both of these facilities
(http://www.anl.gov/). Fermi National Accelerator Lab out in Batavia,
Illinois (http://www.fnal.gov/) is an accelerator that uses particle to
investigate the make up of the atom. Although this is mainly scientific
(not commercial), it is still need to help prove (or disprove) theories of
physics and the galaxy.
As for cost, they are expensive. That is why you don't see every university
or company have one of these things. That is why it is up to our government
to pool its resources to have these instruments made and open to the
scientific community. We have not only universities come here to IPNS, but
we have companies as well that use the neutrons to better understand their
manufacturing processes. We have had companies come here at work and go
back to their manufacturing with a better, cheaper, and more efficient way
of manufacturing their product. That can only help our society and
environment.
Yes, there are also some environmental problems with running these
instruments. They do produce radioactive conditions, but if handled
properly, this does not impact you or me. We continually have safety
reviews of procedures and experiments such that little or no radiation is
allowed to cause harm to people or equipment. There is always going to be
some equipment that is radioactive (our neutron generating target for
example), but it is contained properly so that people are not exposed to
excessive radiation. You would be amazed at the paperwork and requirements
we have in order to work here where there is a potential radiation hazard.
Our standards for exposure are less than what most people get standing in
there basement where there is radon gas radiation.
I hope this helps your argument. I urge you to look at the web pages for
APS and IPNS to get a good idea of what we do here. Good luck with your
debate.
Dr. C. Murphy
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Update: June 2012
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