Page 81 - A Life - my Live - my path

My career - the IRE

the "spectrum" . Outside, several series of 10, 20 and 30 m
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long trajectory tubes (also under a vacuum of 10- ) join various
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rooms in which the targets to be bombed are placed,
depending on the planned production.
With all the installations: mechanical, water, vacuum,
electricity, the whole cyclotron weighed more than 100 tons.

From a nuclear point of view, only the inside of the casemate
was is a hot zone . In reality, the vast majority of the time,
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it was possible to move around the building normally.
Routine maintenance mainly involved equipment in the cold
zone. We only went into the hot zone for corrective or
preventive maintenance on the cyclotron itself.
For me, a young 30-year-old engineer, it was an

extraordinary adventure. All the technologies used were
cutting-edge.

As part of this project, I was able to attend European and
world conferences on particle accelerators. At that time,
three thousand specialists around the world were sharing
their knowledge, and I was one of them. I remember taking
part in the world conference held in Caen . For three days,
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73 The spectrum is a 50-60 cm long piece of copper, the most sensitive part of the
cyclotron. Its shape perfectly matches the part of the spiral trajectory where
it is placed. It allows the protons to leave the interior of the cyclotron and
travel - via trajectory tubes - towards the chosen room in which the target to
be bombarded has been placed. If the magnetic fields were incorrectly
adjusted and, as a result, the protons touched the tip of the spectrum, it could
melt in a few milliseconds.
74 Parts of buildings where radioactive products are likely to be handled are
known as hot zones. Normal areas are called cold zones.
75 In Normandie, France
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