Goodbye, Bevatron.

The Bevatron is being destroyed. It's been sitting idle for 16 years, so I suppose it's about time, but it still makes me a little sad.

I worked there in 1992 and had a grand old time playing with radioactive doohickies and programming computers to control enormous superconducting magnets. I can't imagine a cooler job for a college student. There were so many amazing things like the huge crane on rails that could go anywhere around the accelerator ring, enormous power supplies, and motor generators that looked like they could have powered an aircraft carrier.

Spend some time walking through the photos tagged with bevatron on flickr - there are some amazing shots there. Telstar Logistics has some nice ones, including this shot of the radiation safety key board. The notion is that they can't turn on the beam unless all the keys are in, so if you're going inside the accelerator you take a key with you.

Goodbye, Bevatron!