LABEC, the Laboratorio di tecniche nucleari per l’Ambiente e i BEni Culturali (laboratory of nuclear techniques for the environment and the Cultural Heritage), is a high-qualified centre for the development of new technologies based on particle accelerators and ionizing radiations, and for their applications in environmental contexts and in heritage science. The laboratory is hosted at the Florence unit of the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN) and it is jointly managed by researchers of INFN and of the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Florence.
LABEC, which has been in operation since 2004, is born at the beginning of 2000s thanks to a special project funded by INFN following the great experience gained by the applied nuclear physics group of both INFN and the department of the University of Florence. In fact, the florentine physicists had developed applications of nuclear physics since the mid of 1980s, exploiting a single ended 3 MV Van de Graaff accelerator in the historical site fo Arcetri.
To learn more about the story of LABEC, watch the presentation given during the public event “I primi 100 anni del Garbasso” (5 novembre 2021), published on the GGI (Galileo Galilei Institute, Florence) YouTube channel.