The Isotope Separation and Acceleration (ISAC) facility at TRIUMF, Canada’s national nuclear- and particle-physics laboratory in Vancouver, began flexing its new muscles in April after a Can$48 million ($43 million) upgrade. ISAC-II, as the new part of the facility is known, revs radioactive isotopes to at least 4.5 MeV per nucleon, a three-fold increase; a further boost to 6.5 MeV per nucleon is planned in the next few years, and a move to heavier species will start next year. ISAC-II will be used for studies of nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, and nuclear astrophysics.

The final energy per nucleon depends on the mass-to-charge ratio, but top speeds will reach 10% of the speed of light. The key is that ISAC-II gets isotopes to energies above the Coulomb barrier, says Robert Laxdal, an accelerator physicist with ISAC-II. “It means you have enough energy so that you can penetrate into the nucleus of...

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