The year 2000 was already a year in which records of availability and mean time between failures (MTBF) were set. In 2001, once again, these records were surpassed. A total of 675 shifts (5400 hours) were scheduled for beam delivery to the Users. Nine more shifts (72 hours) were dedicated to radiation tests or personnel safety system checks. Out of these 5400 scheduled hours for user service mode (USM), 5224 hours were actually delivered, which represents a record of availability of 96.8 % (compared to 96.4 % in 2000). The remaining hours are spread between the unavoidable dead time for refills: 76.6 hours for 532 refills (i.e., 1.4 % of the USM time) and the time taken up by failures: 98.2 hours (i.e. 1.8 % of USM time) for 117 beam interruptions. This gives a new record mean time between failures (MTBF) of 46.1 hours (compared to 38 hours in 2000). It is worth highlighting that these results, and in particular these low failure rates, are exceptional in the world of X-ray sources! The figures are presented in more detail in Table 7.


Table 7: General figures for 2001, detailed run by run.