NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/sci/physics/22189

Text File | 1993-01-06 | 6.3 KB | 115 lines

Newsgroups: sci.physics
Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!darwin.sura.net!rsg1.er.usgs.gov!ornl!sunova!sscvx1.ssc.gov!wylie
From: [e-mail] (Russ Wylie)
Subject: SSC Tunnelling Begins
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Organization: Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory
Distribution: All
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 1993 23:43:35 GMT
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Organization: External Affairs, Super Collider Lab






IMMEDIATE RELEASE
    DALLAS, TX. -- (Tuesday, December 29, 1992) --  The "Inchworm," an
advanced technology tunnel boring machine (TBM), was unveiled today at the
bottom of a deep and cavernous shaft beneath the Texas prairie south of
here where it will soon begin the longest single tunnelling project in the
world today.
    Within the next few days, the 69-ft.-long, 250-ton behemoth's 14-ft.
diameter cutter head will be pushed against the shale rock that it will
grind and cut as it bores the first segment of a tunnel that will
eventually stretch around a racetrack-shaped course 54 miles in
circumference.
    The tunnel, ranging in depth from 50 ft. to 250 ft. beneath the earth's
surface, will house the main components of a remarkable machine for
scientific discovery in the 21st Century, the U.S. Department of Energy's
Superconducting Super Collider.  When completed in late 1999, the Super
Collider will be the largest instrument ever constructed for research in
basic science.
    "The start of tunnelling for the Super Collider is the most recent
manifestation of the material progress we have made in constructing this
machine for fundamental scientific discovery," said Dr. Roy F. Schwitters,
director of the Superconducting Super Collider Laboratory.  "A worldwide
team of 2,000 scientists and a nationwide partnership of thousands of
business and industrial employees are now at work in universities,
laboratories, and factories turning plans into the equipment that is
coming together here to form the Super Collider."
    The Super Collider is a giant, powerful accelerator that will propel two
beams of particles -- basic building blocks of the material world -- in
opposite directions before crossing them inside huge detectors that will
record and track the debris of the resulting particle collisions.  Results
will be studied by scientists in a vast international enterprise that
promises to substantially advance humankind's understanding of the
universe, how it began, what it is made of, and how it works.  The
discoveries that the Super Collider will make possible may be expected to
pace the advance of basic science in the next century, Dr. Schwitters
said.
    For the present, though, the design and construction of the Super
Collider is helping to advance technology for American industry.  "The TBM
that is in place today is one example of how this project is helping to
advance American technology and competitiveness in many and diverse
fields," he said.  "Its ability to self propel its 69-ft.-long train as it
continuously tunnels ahead represents a significant advance in tunnel
boring technology, an advance that has been made by an American company,
the Robbins Company, of Kent, Washington.  Other innovations in technology
are being pulled ahead by the Super Collider project in such fields as
high-speed computing and switching, materials, underground construction,
particle beam therapies to treat cancers, cryogenics, and
superconductivity -- a phenomenon that allows electricity to circulate
through its conductor without resistive loss."
    The Robbins TBM will be joined next month by two more machines that are
being assembled at other sites along the main 54-mile accelerator ring.
By month's end, all three machines will be boring segments of the tunnel.
Eventually, five TBMs will be involved in the tunnelling activity.
Completion of the tunnel is planned for 1996, by which time installation
of accelerator components will be under way.
    Concurrently with the main tunnel, four other tunnels are being bored or
excavated for associated smaller interconnected accelerators that will
prepare the particle beam for injection into the collider.  The first of
the four, a linear (straight line) accelerator, has been started and will
be completed by next spring.  Construction will begin next month on the
second of the four, a low-energy booster.  Bids will be taken during the
first quarter of next year for the third, a medium-energy booster, and in
1994 for the fourth, the high-energy booster.  The housings for all four
of the injector accelerators will be completed by 1996.  The injector and
main accelerators will be assembled in nearly 70 miles of underground
tunnels that will be either bored or excavated using cut-and-cover
techniques.
    To date, five contracts covering about 60 percent of the main collider
tunnel have been awarded.  The five firms and the amount of their awards
as as follows:
    A 2.7-mile length was awarded in January of this year to the joint
venture of Obayashi/Dillingham of Pleasanton, CA and San Francisco, CA, in
the amount of $17,827,000; a second 2.7-mile segment was awarded to the
joint venture team of Traylor Bros., Inc., and Frontier-Kemper
Constructors, Inc., of Pleasanton, CA and Evansville, IN, in April for
$14,362,500; an 8.3-mile segment was awarded to the joint venture of
Gilbert Texas Construction Corp., of Omaha, NE, and Ft. Worth, TX, and the
J.F. Shea Co., Inc., of Walnut, CA, in June for $23,891, 000; the fourth
award was also to the Gilbert-Shea joint venture in September for an
8.5-mile segment in the amount of $27,074,000.  The fifth segment was
awarded to the joint venture Traylor Bros./Frontier-Kemper in the amount
of $24.2 million to construct  an 8.1-mile segment.  The five awards total
approximately $107,400,000.
    The Superconducting Super Collider is being built for the Department of
Energy by the Universities Research Association, Inc., a not-for-profit
consortium of 79 leading research universities in the United States and
Canada.  The scientific organization is also responsible for developing
the Super Collider's scientific program and operating the facility on
behalf of the world scientific community.
(12/29/92)


Russ Wylie, Director, External Affairs,
Super Collider Laboratory
Dallas, TX 75237
214 708 1045; FAX [phone]