We would like to express our sincere sympathy to people who have been affected by and suffer from the catastrophic earthquake which hit the north eastern Japan on Friday March 11, and the subsequent crisis in the nuclear power plants in Fukushima. We would also like to convey our gratitude to PF users and colleagues for sending us the warm words and support in this very challenging time. Since the user operation had finished on the morning of March 11, nobody was injured by the devastating earthquake. However, the damages of the facility are not negligible and it will need a substantially long period of time to restart the user program. The situation is becoming better day by day and we could restart the KEK web site and mailing system on March 15. Please refer to the KEK web site on the present situation of infrastructures and other information (http://www.kek.jp/intra-e/index.html).
- We are going to conduct visual inspection of the damages on March 17 when limited electricity is provided for lighting for the first time after the earthquake.
- The 2nd floor entrance of the Photon Factory office building and the crane systems in the experimental hall of PF 2.5 GeV ring have been damaged.（photo 1）
- Many control racks and shelves tipped over or fell onto the floor. (photo 2, 3)
- Overall, the storage ring seems to be spared but some control racks fell onto the floor.
- A Q-magnet of the injector linac dropped from the girder and some bellows were broken.
- It is not possible to foresee the operation schedule at this time, but we expect at least several months before we can restart the user program. We will keep updating information on the recovery processes on our web site.
photo 1 lobby of the PF Bldg. |
Photo 2, 3 PF Hall |
Last modified 2011-03-16