Technicians who operate Crocker Nuclear Lab's cyclotron have altered their work schedules and lifestyles farily significanlty as part of the lab's effort to lend a hand with energy conservation efforts on campus.

The campus's 76-inch particle accelerator is used for wide-ranging clinical and research applications. Beams generated are used to cure eye cancer tumors. The cyclotron's proton beam also helps analyze air quality samples for the government, and various other clients contract for beam time to determine how their microchips will hold up under conditions that simulate radiation in outer space. Also, researchers are studying how exposure to beams can extend the shelf life of fresh food.

But all this takes energy.

Once "fully cranked up," Lab Director Bob Flocchini said, the cyclotron can draw up to 1.3 megawatts, roughly 3 percent of the entire campus's electrical usage during regular business hours.

And so the energy crunch and a constant demand for long periods of uninterrupted cyclotron use have made regular business hours a thing of the past for electrician Tim Essert, operator Randy Kemmler, electrician Jerry Stadel, machinist Kent English and operator Tom Ward.

Working usually in two-man teams, the technicians have since February been coming in for shifts that fall into the neighborhood of 3 a.m. to 11 a.m. or 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. Keeping the cyclotron down during peak usage hours frees up the 1.3 megawatts - enough to power more than 1,000 homes.

"There's certainly a benefit for the campus and the grid as a whole," said Charles Kennedy, assistant director of facilities services. "It's been a big help to us in trying to manage the situation."

While PG&E officials haven't voiced appreciation specifically for the altered cyclotron schedule, they fully recognize the campus has been actively seeking ways to conserve, he said. That spirit of cooperation may well have figured in to PG&E's decision to in May offer the campus an exemption from power outages this summer.

From the beginning of the crisis Crocker Lab has been an easy group to work with, Kennedy said. "They've gone out of their way to offer assistance."

The technicians, who for the most part worked straight 8-to-5 shifts before, came up with the off-peak-hour schedule themselves. "It pretty much broke down to people volunteering," Flocchini said.

Blackouts in late January inspired the workers, Ward said. "(Our consumption) has an effect on everybody else on campus; so we felt obligated to do something."

He said lab employees agree the unusual work hours can create extra stress at home. "And the more it looks like a politically-created problem, the more difficult it is to deal with the sacrifices you're making."

But the job doesn't boast "zero turnover" for no reason said Ward, who at 16 years of service still calls himself one of the lab's two "newcomers." "People are born here and they die here," he said. "In the end, making the sacrifice is not such a bad thing; because it's a great job."

The new schedule also preserves for researchers a steady 16-hour block of potential beam use time.

"It gave us what we wanted," Ward said, noting the solid block keeps most researchers from having to stop mid-experiment for a cyclotron shutdown. "For us, it's really important that we make things work for the experimenter. If we had to deal with blackouts, it would screw up their research."

Ward said that while sometimes inconvenient and draining for the scientists - especially those who journey to UC Davis from out of state - he does not expect the new schedule to ultimately deter them from using the cyclotron. "I don't think it will have any negative impact on research," he said. "If that happened, we'd have to sit down and rethink what we're doing."

Meanwhile, he and the other men at the cyclotron control panels are digging in for the long haul. They expect to remain on their altered schedules for at least another two years.

Kennedy figures that timeline is accurate.

"It seems like the situation will be tenuous for another couple to three years, until new generation comes on line," he said.

"In 2003, things should start looking a little bit better."