Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 16:49:31 +0200 (CEST)
From: SPS/PS Coordinator <spsco@mail.cern.ch>
To: "SPS Users 2004, Period P1A -- Beniamino Di Girolamo"
    <Beniamino.Di.Girolamo@cern.ch>,
Subject: More bad news: now the SPS...

    Dear SPS users,

the PS septum bake-out is progressing. However, recent checks indicate
that the procedure takes a bit longer than initially estimated and beam
might be back from the PS only on Monday morning.

Unfortunately, there are more bad news, this time on the SPS side:
A vacuum leak has been detected in the transfer tunnel from the SPS ring
into the North Area. The leak is located in a bellow close to the beam
splitter for the T2 and the T4 beams. That's the same region where already
in summer 2003 many vacuum leaks occured due to corrosion.

Although a consolidation programme was launched over the shutdown, it
looks that also this new leak is caused by corrosion. Because the
leaking bellow is a non-standard piece, no spare part is available and
a new bellow has to be made in the main workshop. The new bellow will be
ready for installation on Tuesday morning.

The PS MD that was planned for Wednesday will be advanced by one day and
will take place on Tuesday in parallel to the vacuum intervention. This
minimizes losses for T2 and T4 users.

Good news is that because no beam was sent into the area since Wednesday
afternoon, no additional cool-down time (typically 3 days) is needed.

So the plan for the next few days looks as follows:

 o  No beam until Monday morning at least (PS septum bake-out)
 o  When beam available from the PS (Monday):
     - beam to West Area (X5 and X7) and to North Area T6 target (COMPASS)
     - no beam to North Area T2 and T4 targets (H2, H4, H6, H8, NA48/2)
 o  Vacuum intervention on Tuesday in parallel to the advanced PS MD:
     - no beam to all SPS users from 8:00 - 16:00 at least
 o  Hopefully beams to all users again from Tuesday afternoon onwards 
 o  No MD on Wednesday, beam continues

User changes that were scheduled during the Wednesday MD, should take place
as foreseen unless agreed otherwise. However, whenever possible, user
agreements should made such that users affected by the present PS and SPS
problems could continue as long as possible on Wednesday or beyond.

                                  Cheers, Michael

+---------------------+----------------------------------------------+    
| Michael Hauschild   | SPS/PS Physics Coordinator                   |
| Physics Department  | E-mail: SPS.Coordinator@cern.ch              |
| CERN                | Phone:   73564 (office) ext. +41 22 767 3564 |
| 1211 Geneva 23      |         160143 (mobile) ext. +41 76 487 0143 |
| Switzerland         | Fax:     79330          ext. +41 22 767 9330 |
+---------------------+----------------------------------------------+