Episode 29 - The Van de Graaff Accelerator

In 1961 a Van de Graaff accelerator arrived in Portugal with the ability to create a new community of Physicists. Installed in the Physics building of the current Technological and Nuclear Campus (CTN) of Técnico, formerly INETI and ITN, located in Loures, it was the first step towards realizing a national strategy for the use of nuclear energy using natural resources.

The accelerator, which bears the name of the researcher who built it and gave greater prominence to the use of these machines [Van de Graaff – 1901-1967], installed in Portugal, attracted researchers to the country who had completed their doctorates abroad and who gave beginning their scientific careers in national territory.

Part of the accelerator's components is already in the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon, the other parts having been recycled for the new version which, from the 90's onwards, began to reach higher energies. The laboratory where the current accelerator is located, measuring about 4 meters, is also a “mixture of perfectly up-to-date equipment, some of the best available worldwide, with others produced by this laboratory in the 60s”, as explained by Eduardo Alves, researcher and director of the Laboratory of Accelerators and Radiation Technologies at the CTN. (...)

With more than fifty years of life, the accelerator is a testament to the techniques of physics capable of taking us to the origin of the planet. “If we want to go back millions of years, we have to use radioactive isotopes, and it is from the variation in the concentration of these isotopes over time that we are able to date archaeological objects. That's why we know that our planet is a few million years old”, explains Eduardo Alves.

Complementary content: Two stories told by Eduardo Alves

1. The coins of the time of D. Afonso Henriques
2. Silver earrings turned to platinum

More information (in portuguese only).