Hot take: calories are the more intuitive energy unit. “How much energy it takes to heat 1 mL aka 1 g water 1°C” is more relatable than “how much energy it takes to move a 1 kg mass 1 m while accelerating that mass at 1 m/s/s”.
kcal = Cal is silly though
Side note: I know that the heating water thing is problematic because it depends on T, P, and purity (yay thermo), which is why these days cal is defines in terms of J. That does not change my opinion.
Yeah. The magnet quench flash boils a bunch of helium which is itself expensive, and presents a nice asphyxiation hazard as well. And then, assuming the quench damaged nothing, you have to set up the magnet again by getting the coils back down to superconducting temperatures… to get there, you end up boiling off a lot more helium. And then you have have to bring an engineer in to get the electrons spinning through the coil again and wait for the wobbles in the current to stabilize.
Or so I think. I work with NMR spectrometers and not MRIs, but it’s essentially the same technology.