In the early morning hours of July 23, what’s known as the first structural concrete pour took place for the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University.
It began at about 3 a.m. and by the time the sun rose, nearly 140 trucks had dumped 1,400 cubic yards of concrete that will serve as the floor of the underground tunnel that will be the heart of FRIB.
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.