Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

We describe the design and construction status of the Low-Energy Ring (LER) of the PEP-II project, a collaboration of SLAC, LBNL, and LLNL. In the past year we have optimized LER parameters and started component fabrication. By reusing the original wigglers, we were able to simplify the design of the distributed wiggler photon dump, which must dissipate 260 kW of power. The number of RF stations (each comprising a klystron powering two 476-MHz cavities) was reduced from 4 to 3. We have begun fabrication of the arc vacuum system based on an extruded Al antechamber configuration with discrete photon stops and TSPs. The design of the straight section vacuum components, to be fabricated from stainless steel pipe, is also completed. Quadrupoles and dipoles are provided under a collaborative agreement with IHEP (Beijing); correctors and skew quadrupoles are built domestically and sextupoles are refurbished from existing PEP magnets. LER commissioning will begin early in 1998.