Today, the cooling of the ring of the accelerator will be held in the test run of the superconducting accelerator Booster at the NICA complex. The input lead is being cooled.

At the moment, the run is underway. As far as the Booster accelerator is unique, careful supervision of the testing process is necessary so that to avoid possible bugs in the operation of various parts of the accelerator.

Andrey Butenko, Deputy Director of the Laboratory of High Energy Physics JINR, comments on the progress of the Booster’s commissioning, “The first stage of the commissioning programme is to cool the magnet cryostat system of the Booster. It started on 4 December and was completed on 10 December. It is a complex process that requires the participation of a large number of engineers and specialists in vacuum technology, cryogenics, automated systems and control.

The entire cooling process can be divided into 4 stages: cooling of the winding and yokes of magnets with cold helium gas to a temperature of 80-100 K, then liquid nitrogen is supplied to the heat screens of the magnet and cryostat system. After that, magnets are cooled to the temperature of boiling helium of 4,5 K, and, finally, the input lead system is cooled to design parameters. 7 days were allocated to cool the magnet and cryostat system of the Booster. As a result, the entire process took only 3 hours less than planned, thus demonstrating that we understand well the processes taking place in the new superconducting magnet system and so we can accurately plan the time necessary for performing technological operations. The next stage of commissioning will be to check the interlock systems, systems for preventing the superconductivity loss, adjustment of the magnetic field cycle and power sources, corrections, the accelerating system, and others. This work will take 7-10 days. Only the third stage includes injection of a beam into the ring, correction of the first revolution, and then the orbit, the adiabatic capture in acceleration, and, finally, the setting up of the beam acceleration mode.”

It should be reminded that on 20 November, during a working trip to Dubna, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Mishustin visited the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and gave start to the operation of the superconducting accelerator Booster of the NICA complex.

Online temperature survey of superconducting magnets (Kelvin degree) and notes in the operation journal of the control point are available here: http://nucloweb.jinr.ru/nucloserv/online.htm