Ready for the plunge!

Herman Ten Kate, Project Leader for the ATLAS magnet system, standing in front of the truck transporting the magnet across the Route de Meyrin.

Every time any part of the ATLAS detector is moved, it’s quite a spectacle! On Tuesday 29 May, the first end-cap of the ATLAS toroid magnet left Building 180, bound for Point 1. The 240-ton behemoth covered the two short kilometres in no less than five hours. Traffic was interrupted on the Route de Meyrin while the exceptional load was wheeled to its final destination.

One of the technical challenges was to keep the magnet horizontal throughout the operation and, to achieve this, computers permanently monitored the magnet’s angles of displacement and hydraulic jacks rectified any tilt. But the most hazardous part of operation remains the 80-m plunge into the ATLAS cavern.