Triumf-ant

Did you know that Canada has a national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics? And that it is located at UBC in Vancouver? Well, we didn’t until just recently.

And did you know that at Triumf, they:

* Use proton therapy to treat ocular melanomas. A low energy beam is directed into the patient’s eye, irradiating the tumour. Triumf treats a dozen patients a year and the success rate is 80%.
* Built a positron emission tomograph (PET scanner) to image locate cancers.
* Played a role in developing the ATLAS detector for the hadron collider at CERN.
* Discover how and why supernovas explode by recreating the conditions inside the dragon machine.
* Have the world’s biggest cyclotron, used to accelerate 100 trillion particles each second.

Sean and I found all this out last week when we partook in their free guided tour for the public. While there, we also found out some other interesting tidbits:

* Triumf is government funded.
* Owned and operated by a consortium of 17 universities across Canada.
* Their annual electricity bill is approximately $2M.
* CERN can only operate 6 months out of the year. More than that, they’d be no power left for Geneva.
* Although there are gamma rays present, fat chance of anyone hulking out. We would most likely arrive and leave as human as Bruce Banner.
* There were no radioactive spiders on site, so any fantasies of becoming Spiderman were quashed as well.

24/7 monitoring for radiation contamination. Look at all those monitors!

Faraday cages to safeguard electronics.

The highlight of the tour was the cyclotron. Made up of 4000 tons of magnets, it is shielded 3 stories underground by 3 layers of 100 ton concrete blocks, 4.5 metres thick.

Above the cyclotron.

And although it was 18 feet below our feet, it was still strong enough to magnetize paper clips placed out on the table for tour groups. The paper clips acted like compasses on the table and in our hands.

Dancing paperclips.

Although I’m sure it’s safe, (otherwise they wouldn’t be any tours), I did feel a little “weird” standing right above the cyclotron. I felt a slight burning sensation on my right ribcage and Sean felt slightly dizzy.

But as soon as we went outside, we were feeling ourselves again. If airplanes are not advised to fly over the cyclotron, as it affects navigation, it wouldn’t be a surprise that we would indeed feel something.

At the end of the one hour tour, we all had to walk through a body scanning machine, similar to those found at airport security. The difference is that this one screens for radiation contamination.

Exposure at Triumf is about .3 micro sieverts, or the equivalent to eating 3 bananas. I didn’t even know that radiation is measured in banana equivalent doses, nor that bananas are a natural source of radioactive isotopes. Not to put anyone off of eating bananas, the BED is used to remind us that radiation is commonplace and that you would never eat enough, even in the expanse of one’s lifetime, for it to kill you.

Photo credit: BBC

But me being overly dramatic in my head, I prayed that I wouldn’t trigger some sort of security clamp down a la Silkwood, when I walked through.

Luckily, I did not set off any alarms. None of us did. In fact, the tour guide assured us there has never been any incident. That she knows of.

I’m a worrywart because I’m not a scientist and that I respect the unknown in science, but that aside, it was quite an interesting way to spend an afternoon. We did learn a lot. Get yourself psyched up by watching their video on 99 things you can do at triumf.

Science is neat.