About PNNL
Contact: Media Relations, (509) 375-3776
Release date: March 2002
Fast facts on PNNL's 900 MHz wide-bore NMR
Spectrometer facts
Height: 21 feet
Weight:16 tons (equal to about 12 Volkswagen New Beetles)
Diameter: 8 feet
Miles of superconducting wire: 180 miles, or enough to stretch from Richland to Seattle
Cost: $7.2 million
Years in development: 9
Bore size: 65 millimeters, or about two inches, compared with a narrow-bore magnet's 51 millimeter size at room temperature
Magnet's stored energy: 27 megajoules (equivalent to a 30-ton truck driven at 100 mph)
Power: 21.14 tesla - more than 10 times stronger than the most powerful magnetic resonance imagers used in hospitals
Liquid nitrogen stored around magnet: 1,000 liters or about 2,800 12-ounce cans of soda pop
Liquid helium stored around magnet: 1,500 liters or about 4,300 12-ounce cans of soda pop
Superconductivity temperature: 2.2 degrees Kelvin, or 270 degrees below zero
Manufacturer: Oxford Instruments of Oxford, England, and Varian Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.
Shield enclosure facts
The spectrometer is stored within a specially designed shield that will protect people and instrumentation outside the enclosure from the magnetic power. The enclosure has low-carbon steel walls that are two inches thick and contains an 8-foot-deep pit. The walls were among the first items installed during construction of the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory in 1994. They penetrate seven feet underground below the pit floor and provide extra stability to the floor. The entire shielded enclosure is 30 feet high (15 feet both above and below the laboratory floor), 25 feet in diameter and weighs 100 tons—more than six times the weight of the 900 MHz NMR and equivalent to the weight of two Boeing 777 engines. The 900 MHz magnet is centered within the shield both vertically and horizontally to provide the greatest magnet field reduction and magnetic uniformity within the magnet.