Users Group: News
Draft Accelerator Schedule for the Remainder of 2008 - a message from Larry Cardman
The accelerator operations schedule for the remainder of calendar 2008, together with the associated memo are posted at: http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/physics_division/experiments/schedule.html. This replaces and updates the schedule that was released last November as firm through June 2008 and tentative through December 2008. The entire schedule from now through December 2008 will become firm following the open meeting next week. The open meeting to discuss this draft schedule will be held on Wednesday February 20, 2008 at 11:00 AM in Room A110.
We apologize for the late posting of this schedule release. It was necessitated by the large budget uncertainties for the year and, unfortunately, impacted significantly by the realities of the final FY2008 operations budget. While the 12 GeV Upgrade project has (happily) been fully funded this year (99.1% of planned funding, to be precise), the reduced funding for lab operations necessitated cancelling all running planned for FY2008 after the summer shutdown. This reduced the running we could support for the year by almost a third (down to 24 weeks of operations). To minimize the impact on the collaborations with experiments that had been tentatively planned to start after the summer down, we have basically "slipped" the schedule, moving running that was originally planned to start late in July to early October. We regret the inconvenience this has caused.
When we first received news of the final FY2008 budget it looked very much as if we would have to delay restarting the 6 GeV nuclear physics program until January of 2009. Among the money-saving measures under consideration was a long "warmup" of CEBAF (for sure to 4.2K, and possibly even to 300K). Fortunately, the FEL group has agreed to contribute to the operation of the central helium refrigerator (assuming expected ONR funding arrives) in order to support FEL systems tests and operations. This will permit the commissioning of several C50 (upgraded) cryomodules in June, and mid-September, permitting the accelerator to be ready for the planned 5.9 GeV operation in a timely manner and relieving the nuclear physics budget of part of the power bill. Additional resources necessary to mount the experiments in time for mid-October running were generated within the Physics Division by eliminating funding of many activities not directly related to running this year's experiments, and, in particular, cutting preventive maintenance. Despite this, if the ONR funding is not available and other resources cannot be found, it may be necessary to delay the mid-October restart.
For what we hope are obvious reasons, we are waiting to release the tentative schedule for the first half of 2009 until we have additional information on the 2009 budget. On the one hand, an extended continuing resolution at the start of FY2009 would be particularly difficult, while, on the other hand, if anything resembling the Presiden's budget proposed for the Office of Science for FY2009 becomes a reality, by starting running in October we have the possibility of restoring FY2009 operations to the level anticipated during the 12 GeV Upgrade project (i.e. to ~80% of our traditional level of running).