VANCOUVER — Work began Tuesday on a $62.9-million particle accelerator at TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics located at the University of B.C.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held at the site for the new ARIEL (Advanced Rare Isotope Laboratory) which will employ 300 workers for the next 18 months constructing the lab and underground beam tunnel with its 1.8-metre thick walls housing the linear accelerator.
The facility will become operational by 2015 and is expected to find new ways to produce medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s.
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Professor Reiner Kruecken, head of the science division at TRIUMF, said ARIEL would significantly enhance Canada’s capability for producing rare and exotic isotopes for research, physics and medicine.
“ARIEL will allow us to create those isotopes in the laboratory that are created for only fractions of a second in massive stars when they explode at the end of their life. ARIEL will help us understand where the chemical elements are coming from that make up our bodies and the world around us,” he said.
“Remember we are all star dust. Every atom in our body has been in a star, was produced in a star, or in a star explosion,” said Kruecken.
The provincial government advanced $30.7 million for the project with the federal government giving $14.4 million plus $13 million from the National Research Council. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation provided $17.8 million. Other funding came from research partners in the U.S. and India.
TRIUMF is owned and operated by a consortium of 17 Canadian universities. The ARIEL project is being led by the University of Victoria.
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