Speaker
Description
On August 25th 2025 a failure of the preferred 69 kV power line at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton New York, USA) occurred, disrupting all Operations for an extended period. This line supplies power to the north area of the laboratory which includes the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory), The fault necessitated a full system shutdown, disrupting all operations at the Collider Accelerator Department (CAD) including RHIC.
This paper recounts the planning, coordination, preparation for and recovery from the outage and the ultimate return to full operations. Items of note to be discussed include altering the grid in preparation for the subsequent line repairs, cryogenic warm up/cooldown protocols, and steps toward re-establishment of all operational programs. This effort required a total of 15 days, and highlights the vulnerability of aging infrastructure supporting long-term Operations for the laboratory and the Electron Ion Collider (EIC) here at Brookhaven.