8th High Power Targetry Workshop (HPTW2023)

Liquid metal targets for neutron production at SARAF linear accelerator

Not scheduled

15m

Administrative Headquarters 2F conference room (RIKEN Wako campus)

Contributed Oral Topic4-1

Speaker

Arik Kreisel (Soreq NRC)

Description

Liquid metal targets for neutron production at SARAF linear accelerator
Arik Kreisel
Soreq Nuclear Research Centre (SNRC), Yavne 81800, ISRAEL

Phase II of the Soreq Applied Research Facility [1,2], SARAF, is in its early commissioning stage. The SARAF accelerator final specifications include acceleration of proton/deuteron projectiles up to energy of 40 MeV, and a current of up to 5mA. SARAF is one of several modern High Current Accelerator-based Neutron Sources (HiCANS) being developed in Europe [3] and around the world. One of the main challenges for all these facilities is building a target that can withstand the high power beam and be a powerful neutron sources.
Building neutron producing targets for high power low energy ion accelerator can be still considered an unresolved problem, which means that every lab has its own different solution. The main difficulties in designing a target to withstand a 200 kW 40 MeV ion beam like SARAF, are heat removal, radiation damage and difficult maintainability due to high residual activity.
The main neutron source planned for SARAF phase II is a liquid metal target of Gallium Indium (Ga-In) 83.2% gallium and 16.8% indium atomic ratio. The target is designed to avoid radiation damage and improve heat transfer, and is based on prior experience with the liquid lithium target (LiLiT) at SARAF phase I [4]. The Ga-In metal alloy has a melting point of 15◦C and it is designed to absorb the maximum beam power of 200 kW. The target design for SARAF phase II is based on a high-velocity windowless Ga-In jet of a stable 5 mm-thick film flowing at a velocity of up to 5m/sec onto a concave supporting wall.
The expected neutron and isotope production yield from Proton and Deuteron beams in the 20-45 MeV range on thick liquid Gallium-Indium and Lithium targets were recently measured at the COSY (Cooler Synchrotron) accelerator facility at Forschungszentrum Julich GmbH. We will present the results of these measurements, which were accepted for publication at EPJA and will be published soon.

[1] N. Pichoff et al., 10th Int. Particle Accelerator Conf. IPAC2019, Melbourne (2019) 4352-4355.
[2] I. Mardor et al., European Physics Journal A 54: 91 (2018) 1-32.
[3] ELENA: European Low Energy accelerator-based Neutron facilities Association. http://elena-neutron.iff.kfa-juelich.de.
[4] M. Paul et al., European Physics Journal A, 55: 44 (2019) 1-30.