Minutes of SHUG Executive Committee Meeting of May 9, 2003
The Executive Committee convened by conference call at 1:00 PM EDT on
May 9, 2003. 9 of the 11 members were present. The members in attendance
were:
Paul Butler (Secretary)
Zema Chowdhuri
Takeshi Egami (Chair)
Christina Hoffmann
Joanna Krueger (Chair Elect)
Nancy Ross
Paul Sokol
David Vaknin
Angus Wilkinson
Thom Mason, director of the
SNS project, was invited to join this meeting to discuss the status
of the SNS project. Thom began by informing us that SNS had just completed
a review the day before which had gone very well. The project is now
60% complete and still on track to be on time and on budget. The 20%
contingency on the remaining work is tight but acceptable. With regards
to physical facilities, the accelerator and accumulator ring buildings
are finished, the target and CLO (central lab and office) buildings
are progressing rapidly, the front end has been recommissioned up to
51mA, and the linac hardware is now working well. Development of the
mercury target is going well, with the latest tests indicating that
the lifetime of the target vessel will be acceptable even without any
of several improvements currently being studied. Finally the CNMS (center
for nanophase material science) building which is not part of SNS but
will be built contiguous to the CLO and have strong reciprocal links
with SNS will begin construction this summer.
On the instrumentation side, 16 of a potential 24 instruments have now
been approved and 13 have funding in place. As for the mix of IDT vs
IAT instruments, Thom pointed out that so far all instruments, regardless
of funding model, will make 75% of the time available to the general
user program and that all instruments will be staffed by SNS thus providing
a seamless integration across instruments. Asked about staffing levels,
Thom expects to have 5-6 FTE's per instrument by the time the user program
starts. That is contingent on obtaining the full $150-160M/year in operating
funds as a large number of fixed costs will necessarily squeeze the
personnel budget if that target is not met. Asked about the status of
data acquisition and analysis software development, Thom indicated that
there have been a couple of recent hires on the data acquisition side,
while on the data analysis side Caltech, which is building one of the
IDT instruments, is working on a framework, DANSE (white paper available
through SNS website) and that all the North American neutron facilities
have agreed to work together on data analysis. Even though SNS will
likely be the largest neutron scattering center in the country, it cannot
hope to achieve alone what the combined efforts can. Queried about the
current view of when full scale user operation would commence, Thom
said middle of 2008, as stated in the white paper distributed to the
committee last year, is still the target, but that relatively intense
beams, capable of doing lots of good science would be available much
earlier and that some kind of informal program would be in place to
utilize it as much as possible with those users who are willing to accept
the risks associated with beta testing an instrument and a facility.
Other developments include
NSF offering a new grant program with up to $2 million/year for instrumentation
at SNS. Avenues for private funding of the lodging facility such as
is being done at Brookhaven for example are being pursued. If successful,
that would free up the state JINS (joint institute for neutron sciences)
money to build more office, conference and meeting facilities, probably
adjacent to the lodging facilities. Finally, the proposal to include
a doubling of the beam power and building the second target station
in the BES 20 year plan got very good review from the advisory committee.
Takeshi asked Thom to keep
the committee informed as to the state of the operational funding as
it will be extremely important to the user community that the instruments
be adequately staffed. He also asked Thom if there was any input from
the committee that SNS is looking for in the near future to which Thom
suggested that the exact nature of the lodging facility is an issue
that will be coming up soon and on which input from the community would
in fact be much appreciated.
Next Takeshi asked that the
date for the on sight visit be finalized. Of the two possible dates,
Monday June 30 and Tuesday July1, Takeshi suggested that Monday would
probably be better. There being no dissent, the visit was set for June
30. Takeshi asked for suggestions of specific topics to bring up the
meeting. Topics/suggestions should be e-mailed to Joanna and Takeshi.
Zema suggested sample environment as an important relevant topic.
Discussion then turned to
the Fast Access draft proposal. Paul Butler and Paul Sokol had had a
number of email exchanges on the last draft culminating in an off line
phone discussion. Paul Butler summarized the main issue as being the
line suggesting that the decision on allocating fast access time would
be primarily left to the instrument scientist. Given the sensitivity
of the community to conflicts of interest, it was felt inappropriate
for SHUG to be suggesting this. Angus pointed out that his main concern
and intent was to ensure that “fast” is truly “fast.”
A definition of fast was then discussed with a consensus being that
a decision should be made in less than 10 days. It was suggested that
this definition rather than how to implement it should be quoted in
the proposal. In the end this is a proposal to HFIR to institute a pilot
program which should ultimately be tweaked with input from the community
through SHUG as it develops. Angus agreed to edit that section to reflect
the concerns and then circulate the final draft for approval.
Finally, with Takeshi moving
to UT/ORNL June 1, Joanna will be taking over as chair, leaving the
vice chair position vacant. Pursuant to the bylaws, a new vice chair
should be selected. As this position is not also chair elect (i.e. the
vice chair will only serve out the remainder of Joanna’s term
as vice chair, with a new vice-chair/chair elect being elected from
next year’s incoming members), Takeshi suggested that it be open
to new and old members alike. Paul Sokol was nominated and accepted
the nomination. There being no other nominations or volunteers, Paul
was unanimously accepted as the new vice chair.
Paul Butler suggested that
he could forward a copy of the white paper referred to be Thom Mason
regarding the SNS schedule sent to the committee last year for the benefit
of those new members who have not seen it.
There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 2:00PM EDT
Respectfully submitted,
Paul Butler
SHUG Secretary
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