The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center has restarted one of the two accelerator facilities that the center shut down after an electrical fire badly burned a technician last October. The re-opened SPEAR3 facility went through SLAC’s validation process last week and is now operating.

“Switching on SPEAR3 is a long and complex business,” said Neil Calder, the Director of Communication at SLAC. “It’s now ready to start the scientific program.”

SPEAR3, a synchrotron light source facility, is dedicated to the study of the structure of matter at the atomic and molecular scale.

Last December, the Department of Energy, SLAC’s principal source of funding, reported that the Center’s unsafe operating procedures were directly responsible for the Oct. 11 fire.

After the fire, SLAC and the Department of Energy launched a joint investigation and formed a corrective action plan to address safety concerns. SLAC Director Jonathan Dorfan also appointed a validation committee to review the corrective action plan for each accelerator.

“We wanted to be absolutely sure that everything was done with the highest level of safety,” said Calder.

The second accelerator facility, B Factory, is still under review by the DOE and SLAC and will remain shut down indefinitely. Before the fire, the B Factory housed SLAC’s major high-energy physics program, which enabled scientists to investigate the matter-antimatter asymmetry in nature.

The fire occurred when a technician tried to work on a 480-volt power panel that had not been shut off. The injured electrician, David Simon, is suing SLAC for negligence.