In mid-June 2012, the Australian Synchrotron achieved a record 99.76 percent for ‘beam availability’ over the previous 16 weeks. Beam availability is a measure that compares the hours of synchrotron light we delivered to the hours of synchrotron light we allocated for experiments. This is our highest beam availability since we began operations in 2007, and ranks AS machine reliability among the highest in the world.

Right: the storage ring is part of a complex system that produces  synchrotron x-ray and infrared light beams for use in experiments.

This impressive beam availabilty is partly due to the uninterruptible power supply installed in January 2012, which enables AS operators and users to continue working through short-term power supply disruptions. It’s also due to the tireless efforts of AS physicists, operators, engineers and technicians, who are constantly working to address the causes of any downtime and quickly fixing faults when they do occur. The average time taken to fix and problems or faults that affect beam availability at the AS is well under an hour.

In early May, the AS recorded its longest ‘user beam period without beam loss’ of 545 hours, 1 minute and 35 seconds (14:10:46 on 27 March 2012 to 16:42:21 on 2 May 2012).

In mid-June:

• rolling 16-week beam availability reached 99.76%, highest since operations began in 2007
• rolling 16-week mean time between faults reached 221 hrs, highest since operations began
• rolling mean downtime (average time taken to repair faults that affect beam availability) fell to 31 minutes, equal lowest since operations began.

As of 4 pm Wednesday 27 June, we had scheduled 25,000 hours of stored beam since user operations started on 3 April 2007.

Left: what this effort is for - the synchrotron beam is fed into the optics hutch of the XAS beamline, where the synchrotron beam from the storage ring is filtered and modifed to ensure it has the right characteristics for users. Every AS beamline has its own specialised equipment for this purpose.