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Session Abstracts

Representatives of the WAO International Program Committee met in August, 2011, and planned the WAO 2012 agenda and session topics. A member of the IPC will chair each session, and is responsible for chosing presentations and planning discussions.

The session description abstracts are shown below. When you register for the workshop, you will be given an opportunity to contribute an oral presentation or poster covering one or more of the session topics. Submitted abstracts will be forwarded to the appropriate session chair.

Monday, August 6, 2012

How We Do Business (9:00am - 10:00am) (Session Full)
Session Chair: J. Morel

This session is an opportunity for accelerator facilities that are new to the WAO series to present an overview of their accelerator, with a focus on how operations is organized and managed, and what technical challenges they face.

Operator Development (10:30am Session) (Session Full)
Session Chair: V. Toma

Is accelerator operator a lifetime career or a stepping-stone into your organization? Does your organization benefit from long term (20-30 years) operator career? Is there value in operator high turnover (new operators bring new ideas/techniques, openness to new technology)? How do you work on team building, motivation, career ownership, and challenge the operators? How long does an operator have to stay in Operations to get your money’s worth? What’s your definition of a “good operator”? How do you keep them in Operations?

Safety and Regulation (1:30pm - 3:00pm)
Session Chair: P. Ingrassia

This session is intended to address the challenges to accelerator operation due to changes to the regulatory environment and the requirement for growing the safety culture. Regulatory presentations may focus on radiation, or electrical, or industrial safety issues. Safety Culture presentations may focus on how operations responds to the need for additional training, procedures, documentation, or engineered solutions.

When Disaster Strikes (3:00pm Session) (Session Full)
Session Chair: N. Okay

Natural and man-made disasters have significantly impacted accelerator operations in the past and will, inevitably, do so again in the future. Recovering after a disaster can be costly, devastating to program goals and create new or unrealized safety concerns for operations staff. Disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, windstorms, floods, catastrophic equipment failure, cyber attacks, terrorist attacks, human injury or loss of life are events that accelerator facilities have either experienced or taken steps to prepare for.

This session will focus on disasters from the operations perspective, including pre-disaster planning, actual events and response, and disaster recovery. We will look at the initial response to specific events, how control room operations was involved with recovery efforts, new procedures and safeguards that were developed as a result of the disaster and other lessons learned. Presentations will not be limited to facilities that experienced disasters; rather, we will also look at how different facilities plan and put preventive measures in place to prepare for future potential disasters.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Adapting to Changes (8:30am - 10:00am)
Session Chair: P. Ingrassia

This session is intended to address the challenges to accelerator operation due to fundamental changes e.g. increased or decreased funding, or decreased support from the local community, that result in significant changes to operations. Presentations will address challenges to managing increased/decreased staff size, operating hours, etc. Presentations from laboratories whose mission has evolved from fundamental research to energy research (e.g. SLAC), or from fundamental research to a focus on a different fundamental area of research (e.g. FNAL) are of special interest to this session.

Diagnostics (10:30am - 12:00pm)
Session Chair: K. Furukawa

How does Operations establish an interface into the development of diagnostic tools that are useful to them? How can we get involved early enough to get useful diagnostics Operators want and can use?

Automation (1:30pm - 3:00pm)
Session Chair: D. Johnson

Some of the newer and more complex machines require automation to transfer, monitor, manipulate, and tune beams. Processes have become more complicated and Operators would have to use extensive checklists to complete them. In doing so, the chance of error goes up dramatically as well as the time needed to complete the process. This might be considered necessary automation. Then again, technology and the ease of automation is impacting the growth and knowledge of the Operators. Process knowledge, ability, creativity and problem solving skills are slowly being leeched away by automation and technology applications. What happens when automation fails? What is the correct level of automation? Where and when should it be used? In this session, we would like to discuss the benefits of automation and where it is used successfully. We would also like to discuss times when automation is overkill and operations (Operators) suffered as a result.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Killer Beams (8:30 Session)
Session Chair: P. Schuett

How does operation of an accelerator change as the beam power increases?

As in many accelerators beam intensity and/or beam energy are increased, beam power exceeds the threshold, where severe damage of the machine may be caused by mistakes in operation. This forces change in everyday operational procedures: Operators usually learn from their mistakes and like to test new ideas. Now, this is no longer possible. This adds stress to the job. How do they adapt to this new situation? Which opportunities do they have to develop their knowledge about the machine, or to analyze the behavior of the beams? Who decides on the allowed procedures? Can accelerators be tuned by committee?

Superconductivity (10:30am - 12:00pm)
Session Chair: R. Giachino

How do you meet the challenges of superconducting systems? We are seeing superconductivity used in magnets, RF cavities, & target systems. How does this change the way Operators respond and train? Will superconductivity be part of the standard training for Operators? A closer connection between cryogenics groups and Operations becomes necessary."

X-Ray FEL Operation (1:30pm - 3:00pm)
Session Chair: M. Stanek

With recently commissioned X-Ray Free Electron Lasers at accelerator facilities in North America, Asia, and Europe, and more in the planning or construction phases, the question of how to best meet the unique challenges of operating these accelerators will be a timely one for WAO 2012. Maintaining electron/X-ray interactions requires low emittance sources and tight longitudinal control. SASE FEL’s pose small mechanical and beam alignment tolerances, optics matching problems, and difficult to predict micro-bunch effects. An array of automated measurement and tuning techniques are required, as well as the ability to safely explore unexpected parameter space. This session is an opportunity for FEL operations groups to share their experiences, best practices, and lessons learned in reproducing peak performance.

Poster Session (3:30pm Session)
Session Chair: E. Takada

This session is an opportunity for all workshop participants to share their ideas and solutions in poster form. Posters can address any of the topics from the oral sessions, or describe any unique contributions that your accelerator operation can share with the workshop participants. Poster display area will be available during the week, but during this session, poster authors should be available at their poster for discussion and questions.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Recommissioning or Decommissioning (8:30 Session)
Session Chair: V. Toma

Decommissioning of an old facility can be full of “surprises” particularly when there is little or no documentation. Be it permanent decommissioning to free the space for re-use or, temporary decommissioning with the plan to re-commission the facility at a later time – we want to learn about your experience.

Rules vs. Creativity (10:30am - 12:00pm Breakout Session)
Session Chair: M. Bieler

Some accelerators run rather dangerous beams with the potential to harm surrounding equipment. Here safety rules have to be strictly followed.

For some accelerators even the physicists don’t really know how to optimize the performance without trial and error. Here a creative operator can often achieve the best results.

Successful operation of an accelerator often requires a delicate balance between following the rules and trying a more creative approach. Even for different shift crews the balance has to be different, as some operators feel better following a checklist and some find this rather boring and enjoy finding their own way to optimal performance.

What does your control room promote, rigidity or creativity? What is the proper balance? This session is intended to be an open discussion of these questions.

Reliability and Availability (13:30pm - 3:00pm)
Session Chair: L. Hardy / R. Giachino

Reliability has become a central factor in successfully operating particle physics accelerators.

For new facility design, cost, performance and availability must be considered. Synchrotron light sources, spallation neutron sources and medical accelerators require uptime in excess of 90%. For high energy accelerators, the sheer system size and complexity requires an explicit availability goal from the design stage.

Whereas several years ago, the emphasis was primarily on technical equipment meeting performance specifications, now a high level of equipment reliability is requested from the onset. Reliability must be taken into account at all levels of machine and system design such as:


This session will emphasize your own experience and practices in your laboratory. Up to what level have you taken into account the reliability factor when designing a piece of equipment ? What have been the main criteria to insure reliability ? At installation time, did you wish you had done better at the design stage ? What would you do differently the next time?

Communication (3:30pm Session)
Session Chair: G. Johns

Good communication practices are a key piece of control room operations. Timely and accurate information flow is critical for smooth operations and for keeping customers informed of the status of the machine. The methods used to communicate will vary based on the intended audience. Typical audiences include on-shift crews, users, management, maintenance teams, and outside sponsors. This session is an opportunity to discuss challenges and present creative solutions and offer best practices for effective communications across all audiences.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Clever Solutions to Small Problems (8:30am Session)
Session Chair: M. Stanek

Operations groups are continually faced with an array of challenging problems, ranging from complex technical accelerator tuning and troubleshooting, to managing accelerator and personnel safety, to training and communicating within the group. Some of the more annoying problems can often be addressed without spending a lot of money or manpower, but by implementing a simple, clever idea. It just takes some vision and ingenuity to come up with that idea and follow it through. This session is intended to be a series of short talks where labs can share some of their own clever solutions to small problems.