The next large concrete placement for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams is scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. Monday weather permitting.
This will be one of the largest concrete placements of the project, which is located on the campus of Michigan State University.
The concrete is being poured into the underground tunnel that will be the heart of FRIB. Monday’s placement is for the floor of the “target area,” which is where FRIB’s heavy ion beam will hit a target and create the rare isotopes. It’s expected to take more than 30 hours to place the 2,700 cubic yards of concrete that will be delivered to the site by up to 300 concrete trucks.
This is another in series of recent construction developments at FRIB.
Last July, the first structural concrete was poured for the floor of the linear accelerator tunnel. One-hundred-forty trucks delivered the 1,400 cubic yards of concrete.
Construction workers began installing structural steel Sept. 9 and pouring concrete Oct. 23 for the top of the linear accelerator tunnel. The beams used in the installation were the heaviest steel beams manufactured in the United States, weighing in at 12 tons each.
FRIB is a new national user facility for nuclear science, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and operated by MSU. Supporting the mission of the Office of Nuclear Physics in DOE-SC, FRIB will enable scientists to make discoveries about the properties of rare isotopes in order to better understand the physics of nuclei, nuclear astrophysics, fundamental interactions and applications for society, including in medicine, homeland security and industry.
For information on the FRIB project, visit frib.msu.edu.