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November
26, 2002
Energy
Secretary Dedicates New Science Facility at Berkeley
Lab
BERKELEY, CALIF. -- Secretary of Energy Spencer
Abraham was at the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory today to cut an electronic ribbon and
dedicate the Molecular Environmental Science beamline,
the newest beamline at Berkeley Lab's Advanced
Light Source (ALS).
"This versatile, new beamline will be a valuable
addition to this national user facility, already
one of the 'bright lights' in the Department of
Energy's fleet of synchrotron light facilities,"
Secretary Abraham said. "This beamline will
provide new and unique capabilities to look at
extremely small particles that interact with contaminants
in our environment and allow unparalleled observation
of how these particles impact the environment.
The results of this research may be new and more
cost effective ways to meeting the challenge of
environmental cleanup, which is one of the Department
of Energy's critical missions."
The ALS at Berkeley Lab is a synchrotron that
accelerates electrons to energies of greater than
1.9 billion electron volts (GeV), focuses them
into a tight beam and sends this beam around the
curved path of a storage ring for several hours.
Beams of x-ray light can then be extracted and
sent down beamlines to research instruments.
The Molecular Environmental Science (MES) beamline
cost $6 million to construct, with funding from
the department's Office of Science. The MES beamline
will, among other applications, provide researchers
with the ability to study environmental contaminants
at the molecular level. The beamline will generate
x-rays at energies and wavelengths made to order
for investigating elements in the earth's crust
of interest to researchers. These beams can also
be used on wet samples, a critical requirement
for observing environmental chemistry in a natural
setting.
The MES beamline will service three experimental
endstations equipped with the instrumentation
needed to perform wet spectroscopy, high-pressure
photoemission spectroscopy and scanning transmission
x-ray microscopy. With the scanning transmission
x-ray microscope, researchers will also be able
to obtain CAT scan-like images of living cells.
Media Contact:
Number: PR-02-249
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