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            J-PARC Project Newsletter

         _______ No. 23 January, 2006_______


High Intensity Proton Accelerator Project proposed jointly
by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA)
and the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
http://j-parc.jp/index-e.html

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HEADLINES AND CONTENTS

1. <<Overview>>

BUDGET FOR JFY2006 WAS ANNOUNCED.
CALL FOR THE 50 GEV PROPOSALS WAS SENT.
CALL FOR MUON LETTERS OF INTENT WAS SENT.
J-PARC CENTER STARTS ITS OPERATION IN FEBRUARY, 2006.
APPLICATIONS FOR THE RADIATION SAFETY FOR J-PARC WERE REVIEWED.
ANNUAL IAC and A-TAC MEETINGS ARE SCHEDULED IN FEBRUARY.

2. <<Accelerator Group>>

THE INSTALLATION OF THE ACCELERATOR COMPONENTS IS
IN PROGRESS FOR ALL THREE ACCELERATORS, WHILE
SOME R&D IS STILL NECESSARY FOR SOME COMPONENTS.
INSTALLATION OF CONTROL SYSTEMS FOR LINAC IS IN PROGRESS.

3. <<Exotic Nuclear Science Group>>

REACTION CROSS SECTIONS OF 8LI(D, T) AND 8LI(D, ALPHA)
IN THE ENERGY REGION OF ASTROPHYSICAL INTEREST WERE
MEASURED AT THE TRIAC FACILITY.
A PROJECT OF THE FURTHER ACCELERATION OF RADIOACTIVE
NUCLEAR BEAMS IS IN PROGRESS.

4. <<Nuclear and Particle Physics Group>>

FACILITY CONSTRUCTION IS IN PROGRESS.

5. <<Neutron Science Group>>

PROPOSED FUNDING FOR TWO INSTRUMENTS, I.E., A CHOPPER
SPECTROMETER OF LOW ENERGY NEUTRONS AND A RESIDUAL STRESS
ANALYSIS DIFFRACTOMETER HAS BEEN APPROVED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
ALSO A PROPOSAL FOR THE INSTRUMENTS INTENDED FOR DATA
ACQUISITION OF THE NUCLEAR DATA FOR ADS IS FUNDED THROUGH
THE JST COMPETITIVE FUNDING PROGRAM. INCLUDING TWO
INSTRUMENTS BY IBARAKI-PREFECTURE, AND THE PREVIOUSLY
REPORTED INELASTIC SPECTROMETER, AT LEAST SIX INSTRUMENTS
ARE TO BE INSTALLED AT DAY-ONE TIME.

6. <<Muon Science Group>>

THE DEADLINE OF SUBMITTING LOI FOR THE MUON EXPERIMENTS
AT THE MLF-MUON FACILITY IS POSTPONED FOR ONE MONTH,
UNTIL JANUARY 31,2006.

7. <<Nuclear Transmutation Group>>

THE 7TH WORSHOP ON SPALLATION MATERIALS SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY ON DECEMBER 14TH AND 15TH, 2005.

8. <<Radiation Safety Group>>

ADVISORY COMMITTEE MET FOR RADIATION SAFETY OF LINAC.

9. <<Information >>

J-PARC WEB SERVER AND NEW JLAN STRUCTURE STARTED.

10. <<Announcement of Symposia and Meetings>>

11. <<Editorial Note>>


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1. <<Overview>> By Shoji NAGAMIYA
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BUDGET FOR JFY2006 WAS ANNOUNCED.

At the end of December, the budget for JFY2006 was announced
by the Government. Our funding agency made an enormous effort to secure
the budget for J-PARC. Thus we will have the largest budget in the history
of the J-PARC construction. For the construction, the announced
budget is 281.6 Oku Yen. An additional 51.8 Oku Yen will be funded for
items related to J-PARC, such as neutron scattering instruments, 
operational funding for the accelerators, expenses for movement from 
KEK-Tsukuba to KEK-Tokai, and other needed instruments at J-PARC, etc.

With regard to the construction fund, the next year's funding
will be the highest for the project. We need a smaller amount of the
money (at least for construction) from JFY2007 as compared to that of
JFY2006. Therefore, we expect that the completion of the Phase 1
project within JFY2008 is most likely possible, unless we face major
technological difficulties.

Last fall, we received many letters that were addressed to the
KEK Director, JAEA President, myself, et al., to encourage the timely
completion of the project. I thank all the people who sent these
letters. I am sure that these letters significantly influenced
the final decision of funding, which is favorable to the J-PARC.


CALL FOR THE 50 GEV PROPOSALS WAS SENT.
CALL FOR MUON LETTERS OF INTENT WAS SENT.

Recently, the call for proposals for experiments at 50 GeV, in
particular, those for Day-1 experiments was mailed to the communities.
Applications are welcome from all over the world. The deadline for the
submission is April 28, 2006. If you need detailed information, or
consultation, please write jun.imazato@kek.jp.

Also, the call for letters of intent for muon experiments at 3
GeV was mailed to the communities. The deadline for submission is the
end of January, 2006. If you need detailed information, or consultation,
please write yasuhiro.miyake@kek.jp.


J-PARC CENTER STARTS ITS OPERATION IN FEBRUARY, 2006.

In February this year, the J-PARC Center will become functional,
as this Center has been designed to operate the J-PARC at
the operational stage. Since it is expected that the Linac
will deliver the first beams in JFY2006, this Center will start partial
operation from this year. The Agreement between KEK and JAEA (Japan
Atomic Energy Agency) was created and it will be signed in February.
The first director of this Center will be myself for the term of three
years.


APPLICATIONS FOR THE RADIATION SAFETY FOR J-PARC
WERE REVIEWED.

The most urgent task that the J-PARC Center must start in
February is to establish a management structure for the safety control.
An application on the method of how to control radiation safety at J-
PARC was submitted last summer. The Government created a special
committee to review the application. At the end of December, the final
meeting for this Committee was held. It is expected that the approval
for our applications will be given soon.


ANNUAL IAC and A-TAC MEETINGS ARE SCHEDULED IN FEBRUARY.

At the end of February the annual meeting of the International
Advisory Committee (chair; John White) as well as the annual meeting of
the Accelerator Technical Advisory Committee (chair: Steve Holmes) will
be held. From the next meeting, the IAC will send its advice to the
Director General of KEK and to the President of JAEA instead of sending
its advice to the J-PARC Project Director.


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2. <<Accelerator Group>>
by Yoshishige YAMAZAKI and Tadahiko KATOH
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THE INSTALLATION OF THE ACCELERATOR COMPONENTS IS
IN PROGRESS FOR ALL THREE ACCELERATORS, WHILE
SOME R&D IS STILL NECESSARY FOR SOME COMPONENTS.

The linac beam commissioning is planned from next December.
All three Drift-Tube Linac (DTL) tanks up to 50 MeV have been
already installed following the Radio-Frequency Quadrupole (RFQ)
linac and the Medium-Energy Beam Transport (MEBT). Several
tanks of the Separated type DTL (SDTL) have been also installed.
The linac installation is thus on schedule. The field measurement has
been finished for all twenty four bending magnets (BM's) of the
3-GeV Rapid-Cycling Synchrotron (RCS) and the field qualities were
within the specified errors. The field measurement for the quadrupole
magnets (QM's) has been just started. The ceramics vacuum chambers
will be installed in all the BM's outside the tunnel, and will then be
carried into the tunnel from next March to April. The mass production
of the vacuum chambers is on schedule for this plan. Since the QM's
are much lighter than BM's, the vacuum chambers will be installed in
the QM's in the tunnel by the end of this October. The installation of
the BM's in the tunnel for the 50-GeV Main Ring (MR) has been started.
In this way, the production, the field measurement and the installation
of the magnets and magnet power supplies are in general on schedule
for both rings. However, the injection/extraction components and
the RF systems require more effort than expected in order to satisfy
the specification for both the rings.
Photographs of accelerator installation are shown in the homepage of
http://j-parc.jp/Acc/en/index.html.


INSTALLATION OF CONTROL SYSTEMS FOR LINAC IS
IN PROGRESS.

The control systems for linac and L3BT (linac to 3-GeV synchrotron
beam transport) are under installation and testing with the control
network equipment installed in the local control rooms and the central
control building. The racks for control equipment have been placed in
the linac klystron gallery. The final set-up is now underway. We have
decided to use EPICS 3.14.7 as the controls environment for J-PARC.
EPICS record support routines have been developed for various WE-7000
series instrumentation modules. Personnel Protection System equipment
is also being installed for linac and L3BT, and will be finished by the 
end of next February.


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3. <<Exotic Nuclear Science Group>> By Hiroari Miyatake
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REACTION CROSS SECTIONS OF 8Li(D, T) AND 8Li(D, ALPHA)
IN THE ENERGY REGION OF ASTROPHYSICAL INTEREST WERE
MEASURED AT THE TRIAC FACILITY.

The 8Li(d, t) and 8Li(d, alpha) are important paths for the
estimation of the heavy element abundance in the inhomogeneous
Big-Bang model. These reaction cross sections were directly
measured in the low energy region from 0.4 MeV to 1.2 MeV, which
corresponds the Gamow-peak of 3 Giga-Kelvin. The typical 8Li-beam
intensity was 100 kHz. Emitted tritons and alpha particles were
detected by large solid-angle double-sided striped-Silicon telescope
to measure simultaneously their angular distributions.


A PROJECT OF THE FURTHER ACCELERATION OF RADIOACTIVE
NUCLEAR BEAMS IS IN PROGRESS.

The 1.09 MeV/u beams from Inter digital H-type (IH-) linac
will be further accelerated with an already existing superconducting (SC-)
linac at JAEA Tandem facility. Construction of the beam line from the
IH-linac to the SC-linac has been started at the end of this year.
Ion-optical elements will be installed in the next year. The additional
two beam bunchers as well as eight low-beta SC-cavities are necessary
for efficient RNB (Radioactive Nuclei Beam) acceleration for the higher
energy than 5 MeV/u. Performance test of these elements are also in
progress.


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4. <<Nuclear and Particle Physics Group>>
by Takashi Kobayashi and Toru Ogitsu
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FACILITY CONSTRUCTION IS IN PROGRESS.

The construction of the experimental facilities made progress last
year for both the neutrino facility and the hadron (slow beam) facility.
Preceding the proton line tunnel a part of the pion decay section has
already been completed for the neutrino facility to enable the
over-crossing construction of a 3-GeV extraction line to MLF. Steel
boxes were embedded in a 6m thick concrete wall to form the 50 m
upstream half of the decay volume with an inclination of 3.6 degrees for 
the generation of a 2-3 degree off-axis neutrino beam toward
Super-Kamiokande. The connected steel decay pipe will be water-cooled;
the cooling tubes were connected from box to box, tested for tightness,
and the whole volume was successfully evacuated in December.
In operation the volume will be filled with 1 atm helium gas.

The length of 180 m for the extraction line of the slow beam to
the hadron experimental hall is a requirement met for beam optics to
raise the beam from the accelerator level to the hall level by 2.9 m
and also to branch the 50 GeV beam into possibly 3 primary lines.
The tunnel construction, which started two years ago, is now
approaching completion. The tunnel is formed by thick concrete
walls for radiation shielding. Along with this tunnel, the main hall
construction is proceeding. Civil work for the base of the building
is now being made. The completion by the end of Japanese fiscal
year 2006 is scheduled. In March the installation of beamline
magnets along the extraction line will begin by transferring magnets
from the KEK 12-GeV beam lines.


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5. <<Neutron Science Group>> by Yujiro IKEDA
(Materials & Life Science Experimental Facility Group)
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 PROPOSED FUNDING FOR TWO INSTRUMENTS, I.E., A LOW ENERGY NEUTRON
CHOPPER SPECTROMETER AND A RESIDUAL STRESS ANALYSIS
DIFFRACTOMETER HAS BEEN APPROVED BY THE GOVERNMENT.
ALSO A PROPOSAL FOR THE INSTRUMENTS INTENDED FOR DATA
ACQUISITION OF THE NUCLEAR DATA FOR ADS IS FUNDED THROUGH
THE JST COMPETITIVE FUNDING PROGRAM. INCLUDING TWO
INSTRUMENTS BY IBARAKI-PREFECTURE, AND THE PREVIOUSLY
REPORTED INELASTIC SPECTROMETER, AT LEAST SIX INSTRUMENTS
ARE TO BE INSTALLED AT DAY-ONE TIME.

The building of the MLF conventional facility is in progress on
schedule. The beam line tunnel of the 3GeV beam transport line was
connected to the downstream part, which leads the line to the neutron
target station in MLF. Alignment of magnets with the vacuum ducts is
being carried out. Up to now, the overall accuracy of installation is
confirmed within 0.5 mm. In the MLF experimental hall, cranes of 130,
50 and 30 tons are hooked over the garters.

To demonstrate the fabrication method for a five layered thin
moderator vessel structure, a trial model was fabricated. It is found that
we still need very high skill of welding. A seal material for the mercury
containment was identified after stringent tests using a full size mockup
test stand. Shutter gates and special shaped shielding blocks are under
fabrication. A loop with He bubble injector was attached to MIMTM to
investigate the effect of micro He bubble in mercury for the pitting
damage mitigation. The budget for two instruments proposed by JAEA
has been approved by the government. A low energy neutron chopper
spectrometer and a residual stress analysis diffractometer are to be
constructed during three years from 2006 to 2008 within a fund of 27 Oku
yen.
Also a proposal for the instruments intended for data acquisition of the
nuclear
data for ADS is funded through the JST competitive funding program.
Including two instruments by Ibaraki-prefecture, and the previously
reported inelastic spectrometer, at least six instruments are to be
installed at Day-one time.

The fourth N-TAC (Neutron Source Technical Advisory Committee)
meeting was held at Tokai-site. Neutron source safety, maintenance 
scenario, beam-commissioning were highlighted.


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6. <<Muon Science Group>> by Yasuhiro MIYAKE
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THE DEADLINE OF SUBMITTING LOI FOR THE MUON EXPERIMENTS
AT THE MLF-MUON FACILITY IS POSTPONED FOR ONE MONTH,
UNTIL JANUARY 31, 2006.

The deadline of submitting LoI for the muon experiments at the
MLF-Muon Facility is postponed for one month, until January 31, 2006.

The Project Team has been calling for the Letters of Intent,
based on the recommendation of the Muon Science Advisory Committee
(MuSAC), for muon experiments requiring major instrumental installation
at the MLF-Muon Facility.

In the M2 tunnel in the vicinity of the muon target, all the
components such as magnets, target chamber, and profile monitor
etc. are placed on the individual alignment plate associated with a
pair of knock pins. In order to allow remote handling installation,
all the alignment plates are planned to be flat on the top surface and
each position of the knock pins has to be located with a precision of
0.1 mm. Since all the alignment plates are placed on the 70 mm thick
iron base plates, level measurements were done on the base plate at
the locations for the each corners and center positions of the
alignment plates to determine the thickness of the shim plates
underneath the alignment plates.

Also the location of the muon target was determined and marked
precisely referred from a pair of the alignment base station #8 and
#9, which were prepared by the neutron group. Then, proton beam line
and 4 sets of the secondary lines were determined by using a laser
tracker within a precision of 0.05 mm. By utilizing these measurements,
all the alignments plates are planned to be installed on the base plates
with a precision of 0.1 mm in XY directions and 0.1 mm in height in
February, 2006.


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7. <<Nuclear Transmutation Group>> by Hiroyuki OIGAWA
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THE 7TH WORSHOP ON SPALLATION MATERIALS SCIENCE AND
TECHNOLOGY ON DECEMBER 14TH AND 15TH, 2005.

The 7th workshop on spallation materials science and technology
was held on December 14 and 15, 2005, near the J-PARC construction site.
Japan Atomic Energy Agency and High-Energy Accelerator Research
Organization organized this workshop. Nineteen topics on materials issues,
including those for Pb-Bi spallation target of Accelerator- Driven System
(ADS), were presented, and about fifty researchers participated from outside
and inside the J-PARC project. The feasibility of a small beam dump that
can accept a 400MeV- 26kW proton beam was confirmed by temperature
and structural analysis. This dump will be located adjacent to the
Transmutation Physics Experimental Facility (TEF-P) to receive residual
protons after the beam extraction by the laser charge exchange technique.
The extracted low power (10W) proton beam will be introduced to the TEF-P.


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8. <<Radiation Safety Group>>
by Hideo HIRAYAMA and Hiroshi NAKASHIMA
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ADVISORY COMMITTEE MET FOR RADIATION SAFETY OF LINAC.

An advisory committee was organized after the application
for the license of the radiation facilities of the LINAC and the
Switchyard in the Hadron Facility was submitted to the Ministry of
Education,
Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) on 31st, August. In
the first committee meeting on 8th, November, the facility overview
of J-PARC and the technical details about the safety design of LINAC
were presented to MEXT. The second and the last committee met
on 7th, and 28th, December, respectively. In the committee, a radiation
and control safety scheme, the fire accident, beam loss, and interlock
system of LINAC were discussed in detail. Through these discussions,
the committee will report the summary of the radiation safety aspects
of the LINAC to MEXT.

The Switchyard in the Hadron facility will be a radiation controlled area
only for activated magnets brought from KEK and an inspection conducted
for accelerator facilities will not be applied to this facility. The MEXT
suggested that we submit the application as a part of the 50GeV MR facility.
The controlled area is scheduled to be implemented around 15th, March, 2006.
The details of the activated equipment were explained to the Tokai-mura
office
and the Ibaraki prefectural office, in November and December.


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9. <<Information System Group>>
by Toshio HIRAYAMA and Setsuya KAWABATA
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J-PARC WEB SERVER AND NEW JLAN STRUCTURE STARTED.

J-PARC INFORMATION SYSYTEM GROUP started two Web
servers since this October. One is for announcements of the projects
to the world and is opened to the internet. Official Web pages of the
project are expected to be moved to the server. The other is used for
internal communication between JAEA, KEK and J-PARC people and
is opened only between the three organizations. JLAN is a backbone
LAN for the J-PARC and also connects Tokai and Tsukuba campuses
which are about 70km apart. So far JLAN used global IP addresses
for all network terminals. However since the global addresses are a limited
resource, the JLAN address structure was rearranged on this October
so as to use private address and NAT (Network Address Translation)
mechanism for internal users. JLAN does not stand alone but
cooperation with JAEA and KEK LAN is clearly important. This was
considered in designing the new JLAN.


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10. Announcement of Symposia and Meetings
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1) International Workshop on Neutron Total Scattering Instrument 24 Jan
at KEK
2) International Workshop on Small Angle Scattering Instrument 25 Jan at
JAEA
3) International Workshop on Reflectometer 26 Jan at KEK
4) Accelerator Technical Advisory Committee (A-TAC)23-25 Feb.
5) International Advisory Committee (IAC) 27-28 Feb.

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11. Editorial Note
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Editorial Board:
Masatoshi ARAI (chair): masatoshi.arai@j-parc.jp
Koji YOSHIMURA: koji.yoshimura@kek.jp
Yujiro IKEDA: yujiro.ikeda@jaea.go.jp
Nobuo OUCHI: nobuo.ouchi@jaea.go.jp
Shinya SAWADA: shinya.sawada@kek.jp
English Editor: Dick Mischke mischke@triumf.ca

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