Construction and commissioning of the national synchrotron light source

The road from conception to completion of a large facility like the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) is a long and tortuous one. More than fifteen years have passed since the first discussions of a synchrotron radiation source at BNL, and there have been many twists and turns in the process. In putting together an accelerator project like this, there are many critical skills that must be assembled, and budgets, schedules and organizations must be properly examined. The lessons learned in design and commissioning of the NSLS rings may be summarized as follows: (1) the damped emittances expected of a Chasman-Green lattice are attainable at high current, if ion trapping problems can be circumvented; (2) there have been no unexpected effects from the rather strong sextupoles required to correct the chromaticities in this type of lattice; (3) the most important beam instabilities are coupled-bunch, and can be counteracted; and (4) commissioning the NSLS rings was mostly an effort to bring the hardware into conformation with the original ring design; achievement of the specified magnetic fields, injection timing, vacuum, RF voltages, etc. led to ring performance which was easily good enough to begin operation