Page 79 - A Life - my Live - my path

My career - the IRE

the electrical, electronic and IT sections. The basic team was
born.
We received specific training on the operating principles
of the cyclotron. We visited several nuclear centres in
Europe to get a feel for the different possible arrangements
to be put in place, bearing in mind that for the IRE, this was
a production environment whereas the other cyclotrons
were research environments. We visited the CEA in
Grenoble in France, the University of Berlin in Germany, the
University of Karlsruhe in Germany, CERN in Geneva in
Switzerland and above all the Louvain-la-Neuve cyclotron in
Belgium.
The project began on a vacant lot and lasted three years.
Each of us, in our respective fields, had to draw up the

interior plans of the reserved spaces and define all our
needs. When the building was finished, we moved from the
Industrial Applications department (building-2) to the
cyclotron department (building-14).
We then followed all the phases of the machine's
construction. Manufacturing was entrusted to the French
company CGR-MEV, part of the Thomson group, based near
Paris. The Belgian prime contractor was ACEC . The
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commercial agreements provided for a return of more than
400 million Belgian francs (€10 million) for the Belgian
companies. As well as travelling to Paris during the design
phase, many people travelled to Belgium to monitor the
construction of the various items of equipment needed for

72 Ateliers de Constructions Electriques de Charleroi
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