The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams installed the first of 48 cryomodules into its linear accelerator tunnel. When FRIB is in operation, the linear accelerator will drive a beam of stable atomic nuclei up to half the speed of light to strike a target area, and the resulting collision will produce rare isotopes.

This installation involved the β=0.085 cryomodule, which is FRIB’s first completed and tested cryomodule. It is approximately 20 feet long and weighs approximately 26,000 pounds.

The linear accelerator is made of cryomodules, which contain superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities that accelerate the beam while operating at temperatures hundreds of degrees below zero. The β=0.085 cryomodule contains eight superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) β=0.085 quarter-wave resonators, three superconducting focusing solenoids and three beam-position monitors.