The ANU has gradually moved away from renting liquid nitrogen tanks to ownership. This has meant the School has gone from four tanks to two. The loss of a dedicated liquid nitrogen tank for the liquid helium plant has necessitated many trips for the 250 litre dewars out to the Level 2 filling station. John Bottega has gradually moved back into Laser Physics having done an outstanding job of organising the cryogenics plant. Scott Makin and Owen Kershaw are now taking over the running of the plant.
Efforts are underway to partially automate the operation of the liquid helium refrigerator.
Electricians This small team of George McEwan and Scott Makin have had a very busy year with big projects for the Plasma Research Laboratory due to the installation of major equipment for H-1. UV Physics received considerable attention with the setting up of their new photofragment laboratory. New 15A outlets were installed in several areas of Nuclear Physics as well as numerous maintenance and installation jobs in Applied Maths, EME and Laser Physics. An important part of the EU service is the timely delivery of fault diagnosis and repair of the School's diverse research equipment. This year more than 100 separate events were resolved.