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Small Businesses Benefit from Berkeley Lab’s Recovery Act Funds
Funds also create jobs—at the Lab, at small businesses and down the chain.
As funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act start to flow into Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, much of that funding is flowing out to small businesses. To date, Berkeley Lab has been awarded more than $220 million in Recovery Act funds, a large part of which will go toward infrastructure projects and buying and upgrading computers and scientific equipment, such as microscopes, lasers and gene sequencers.
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 One of the largest subcontracts to receive Recovery Act funding at Berkeley Lab is with Clauss Construction, which falls into one of the federal government’s special subcategories of small businesses as it is owned by a service-disabled veteran.
Based in Lakeside, California, outside San Diego, Clauss had been awarded a $24.8 million contract back in July 2008 for demolition of the Bevatron, a massive facility that was once one of the world’s leading particle accelerators. It was a three-year contract, with the second and third year dependent on future funding.
Fortunately for Clauss, the Department of Energy announced in March that the demolition would receive $14.3 million in Recovery Act funding, guaranteeing that the work would continue uninterrupted into the second year of the contract. Source: Excerpt from LBNL Newletter October 28, 2009
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 Bevatron Demolition: Uncovering the Cover-Up
 Berkeley - October 21, 2009
Berkeley’s Sea Breeze Café, located at Interstate 80 and University Avenue, appears to be offering more than hot coffee to commuters these days. This morning, the cafe parking lot was the scene of a truck rally. More than a half dozen, semi truck-trailers loaded with debris from the demolition of Berkeley National Laboratory’s Bevatron made a quick stop there.
 Their cargo of concrete, shielding blocks was once used to insulate the radioactive emissions from the 1950s particle accelerator. The several-ton shields are suspected to be radioactive. However, none of the trucks were labeled as such.
Perhaps even stranger than the appearance of the unmarked demolition waste was the fact that all the drivers were pulling off the tarps covering the concrete shields after driving less than three miles from the lab. A short time later, the trucks all caravanned down the highway with their uncovered cargo. It begs the question, “Why?”
BerkeleyCitizen Berkeley’s Internet News
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Review of Radiological Monitoring at LBNL - Final Report
Bernd Franke and Anthony Greenhouse
Prepared under Contract with the City of Berkeley, August 23, 2001
Historical exposures (1997 and earlier)
....Certainly the most significant conclusion(s) to be drawn from this limited review of environmental documents concerned the operations of the Bevatron complex and particle accelerator. IFEU determined that historic radiation doses, measured at LBNL's Olympus Gate (ENV-B13D) Direct Radiation Monitoring, Station, had exceeded the then allowed annual dose (500 mrem/y) by nearly 60%. (Note: The dose reported at Olympus Gate was calculated to be about 800 mrem/y. It should also be noted that Olympus Gate Monitoring Station is located just a few meters below a offsite residence at the intersection of Olympus Avenue and Wilson Circle.
Bevatron Demolition: Community Questions and Clarifications
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WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Bevatron, the
largest high-energy accelerator in the world, when it opened
in 1954 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (then called
the UC Radiation Laboratory), was declared eligible on December
5, 1995, for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.
On that same date the California State Office of Historic Preservation
listed the Bevatron on the California
Inventory of Historic Places.
The historic importance of this cold-war era architecturally
significant structure, the Bevatron,
renders the idea of its demolition tragic. The Bevatron meets all (3) three criteria for listing eligibility on the
National Register of Historic Places.
Criterion A. By its “significant contribution
to broad patterns of our history”, the Bevatron was among the world’s leading particle accelerators during
the 1950s and 1960s and was considered the most productive accelerator
of its time. It helped establish American leadership in scientific
research with significant contributions in the fields of particle
and nuclear physics. Four Nobel Prizes were awarded for this
research, largely conducted at the Bevatron.
Criterion B. The Bevatron is associated with many significant persons who worked at the Bevatron during the productive
period of their lives. Some spent their entire careers there.
Notably, Emilio Segre and Owen Chamberlain won the Nobel Prize
in 1959 for their discovery of the anti-proton in an experiment
at the Bevatron. Luis Alvarez won
the Nobel Prize in 1968 for his development of the bubble chamber
particle detector and for his role in finding 18 particle resonances
with the LBL bubble chamber used in conjunction with the Bevatron.
Criterion C. The Bevatron “embodies the distinctive characteristics of a type”
of building. That is, it is a distinguished example of a rare
international building type, the accelerator building. The Bevatron possesses the distinguishing characteristics of the type that
“can be expressed in terms such as form, proportion, structure,
plan, style or materials”. The design is a reflection
of the research process in form, materials, structural systems
and plan. The Bevatron illustrates
patterns associated with all accelerator buildings, the individuality
of the particular situation and the evolution of the processes
it was designed to accommodate.
Further, the Bevatron meets Critierion
C in “ representing the work of a master”, i.e.
the architectural firm of Masten and Hurd. At that time they
specialized in large-scale institutional projects, which in
addition to the Bevatron, included
San Francisco’s Hasting College of Law and Warren Hall
on the UC Berkeley campus.
The citations above are from the Dobkin/Corbett Historic Architectural
Evaluation Report prepared in1994 for the Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory.
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