Romuald LEVALLOIS

25, Vacuum Engineer

Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds (GANIL)



CEA-DSM/CNRS-IN2P3



Do not mistake a vacuum cleaner with a Vacuum Engineer!



My job is to clear the way for the atoms



I am from Caen. I discovered GANIL [Grand Accélérateur National d’Ions Lourds] during a visit, organized before the days when the “Vigipirate” plan (the French  anti-terrorist plan) was enforced. This installation is extremely impressive! After I graduated from university, I was hired as a Vacuum Engineer. This is the place where atoms are studied. To isolate them, all particles likely to interfere with the beams must be removed, and therefore, a vacuum must be created along the atom's path by means of pumping systems. Some of them are similar to vacuum cleaners, others, to miniature aircraft reactors, and still others use intense cold, of the order of minus 250 degrees. If we weren't here to "produce" this vacuum, nothing could be done at GANIL. We could be assimilated to a black box from which the beam emerges. Industry uses vacuum, but not as high as at GANIL: of the order of a millionth of a bar. In our case, the pressure is divided by 10 billion! To reach such a high vacuum, our work must be performed under extremely clean conditions. A single drop of water on a wall could prevent the pressure from decreasing to the correct value.

Image copyright: F.CASTEL