Dr. Wayne Kinnison, professor of physics at Texas A&M University-Kingsville gets help from two Kingsville residents while unloading pieces of the Van de Graff accelerator into Hill Hall. (Photo by Katherine Robinette) On Tuesday, Aug. 31, the Van de Graaff accelerator was delivered to a Research Laboratory in Hill Hall at Texas A&M University- Kingsville.

The accelerator is 22 feet long and 4 feet tall and was transported on three trucks from the State University in New York at Cortland, who donated the accelerator to TAMUK. It accelerates protons up to 400 KEV, near the speed of light.

“It is going to be used for undergraduate research projects in nuclear science, engineering, and health physics. It was originally manufactured in 1970 and was used in Cortland for 20 years,” Dr. Wayne Kinnison, Professor of Physics at Texas A&M University-Kingsville said.

Physics majors John Calvin Martinez, senior, and John Budd, sophomore, spent five days this past summer in New York helping with the dismantling of the accelerator to get it shipped here and Kingsville resident, Paul Briegman, helped unload the machine on Tuesday. Lucille Kruse, a beneficiary of TAMUK, donated part of the funds to pay for the transport and the TAMUK Physics department paid for the rest of the cost. The accelerator is worth close to $500,000.

Funding for the refurbishing of the accelerator and the operation of it at TAMUK is provided by the Nuclear Power Institute and the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.