The European XFEL project has completed one of the first in a series of future milestones: excavating 480 meters of the tunnel system for the project. Covering an area of 3.4 kilometers, the finished tunnel will extend from Schenefeld in northern Germany to DESY in Hamburg. The TULA (TUnnel for LAser) machine is responsible for this initial task, and it will excavate other sections of various tunnels for the projects in the future.
Despite the possibility of stubborn soil and other unknown factors that could potentially delay a tunnel excavation, TULA was able to complete the project on schedule in eight weeks. Soon the machine will be commissioned for its second assignment, the digging out of a 594-meter-long photon-tunnel section.
Planning for the construction of the superconducting linac is also coming along. Two workshops were held in September where representatives from DESY and from two industrial firms met to discuss their collaboration. Research Instruments (Germany) and Zanon (Italy) were chosen to produce eight pre-production superconducting cavities, and to later supply 280 cavities. Delivery of the pre-production units will begin in 2011 and production of the rest of the cavities will take place between 2012 and 2014.
