07.10.2009 (EBG)
Environmental Impact Assessment of the centre for ion therapy and research has begun

„Today is a major milestone for MedAustron, since today the necessary documents for the environmental impact assessment have been submitted," says a happy Mag. Klaus Schneeberger, EBG's chairman of the supervisory board, and adds: „With this decisive step we are well within our schedule and right on track in this very important project for Lower Austria and Austria as a whole." In the past ten months the whole MedAustron team as well as 30 additional experts and the general planning team have been working intensively on the completion of the necessary documents at CERN (Geneva) and in Vienna Neustadt. Now the ten folders have been handed over for assessment to the responsible department of the Federal State of Lower Austria. Dr. Martin Schima, chief executive of EBG adds: „I would like to thank our whole team for this enormous effort in order to bring this centre about!" The environmental impact assessment of MedAustron is necessary, since the core of the facility is a particle accelerator with radiation beam energy of more than 50 mega-electron-volt (MeV).




Dr. Michael Benedikt, the technical director of the MedAustron project at CERN explains: „Integrating the planning of the particle accelerator with medical technology and with the construction planning while observing all radiation protection regulations and other norms is one of the biggest challenges of this project.” According to the scientist the planning of the details can start now.

The 200-million-euro project is now entering the execution stage: After the completion of the environmental impact assessment which will take approximately 10 months, construction is planned to begin in the fourth quarter of 2010. The commissioning of the facility is scheduled for three years later and in 2014 the first patients are to be treated at MedAustron and research is planned to begin.

“With today’s start of the environmental impact assessment of MedAustron we have taken a big step towards this goal,” Schneeberger, Schima and Benedikt agree.

Picture (f.l.t.r.):
DI Hubert Rammer, EBG MedAustron Construction Manager
Dr. Martin Schima, CEO of EBG MedAustron GmbH
KO Mag. Klaus Schneeberger, Chairman of the Board EBG MedAustron
PD Dr. Michael Benedikt, Project Coordinator at CERN
[Copyright by EBG MedAustron GmbH, to use free of charge]