When it begins operations, scheduled for later this year, the facility will produce the most intense neutron beams on Earth to probe the molecular structures of materials.

"The ring is the last major accelerator element delivered by one of the partner labs in the six-laboratory project," said Thom Mason, the SNS director.

"Its successful operation confirms not just the robustness of the Brookhaven National Laboratory components but also the full integration of accelerator hardware designed and built using expertise throughout the national DOE complex. We are looking forward to the first beam on target later this year."

The Brookhaven laboratory, on Long Island, N.Y., led the design and construction of the accumulator ring, which will allow an order of magnitude more beam power than any other facility in the world.

In SNS operation, the superconducting accelerator produces proton pulses traveling at almost 90 percent of the speed of light. In the ring, the protons within a pulse are "accumulated" to increase the intensity 1,000-fold. At that point, the pulse is extracted 60 times per second and delivered to the mercury target to produce neutrons.

During the recent test, after only three days of its initial operation, the ring accumulated protons, which were then extracted and sent to a point just short of the target.

"With this extraordinary success, we are definitely on our way to operate the world's highest intensity proton accelerator," said Norbert Holtkamp, the SNS accelerator systems division director.

"The successful commissioning of the accumulator ring - in record time for this type of device - is a testament to the extraordinary collaboration between Brookhaven and Oak Ridge," said Jie Wei, who led the Brookhaven team.

Because of their lack of charge, neutrons have a superior ability to penetrate materials. Researchers can determine a material's molecular structure by analyzing the way the neutrons scatter after striking atoms within a target material.

The SNS will use spalled neutrons with a host of instruments and will involve researchers from the United States and abroad to study materials. That research is expected to form the basis for new technologies in telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation, information technology, biotechnology and health.

SNS will increase the number of neutrons available to researchers nearly tenfold, providing clearer images of molecular structures. Together, ORNL's High Flux Isotope Reactor and SNS will represent the world's foremost facilities for neutron scattering, a technique pioneered at ORNL shortly after World War II.

Five Department of Energy Office of Science laboratories - including Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven, Jefferson and Los Alamos - participated with Oak Ridge in the design of the $1.4 billion SNS project.

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