US accelerator accident hospitalises worker, delays XFEL startup

The turn-on of the world’s fastest and brightest x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) has been delayed by an accident that left a worker injured and hospitalised on the morning of December 27, 2022. A spokesperson for the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US says that the cause was an ‘electrical incident during maintenance activities involving high voltage equipment’. According to the San Francisco Standard a high-voltage electric arc struck an electrician who was shutting down power to the lab and disfigured them.

Mike Dunne, director of the SLAC Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) XFEL, said the incident happened during the facility’s annual closure during the Christmas and new year period. At a public meeting at the Royal Society in London, UK on 30 January, he said that the situation was ‘very unfortunate and troubling’.