IFIN-HH, Magurele-Bucharest
The Bucharest FN Tandem Accelerator was put in operation in 1973 and upgraded a first time in 1983 to 9 MV. In the period 2006-2009 a second program of the tandem upgrade was performed aiming to transform this accelerator in a modern and versatile facility for atomic and nuclear physics studies as well as for different applications using accelerated ion beams. The upgrade was achieved by replacing the main components of the tandem by new ones and by adding new components. The old HVEC belt of the Van de Graaff generator was replaced by a "Pelletron" system, the old inclined field stainless steel electrodes accelerator tubes were replaced by titanium spiral field tubes, the old HICONEX 834 sputter negative ion source was replaced by a new SNICS II sputter source and all old electronic equipment including RMN and Hall probe gauss meters as well as low voltage and high voltage power supplies for the magnets, lenses and ion sources were replaced by new ones. The new equipment added to the tandem consists of a helium negative ion source, a new injector based on a multi-cathode ion source 40 MC-SNICS II for AMS applications, a new GVM, a new pulsing system in the millisecond range and a new chopper and bunching system for pulsing the ion beam in the nanosecond range. Now the tandem is currently operated in very stable conditions up to 9 MV on a basis of about 4000 hours/year accelerating a broad range of ion species.
MLL/TU, München
The Tandem accelerator of the Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratorium (MLL), the former "Beschleunigerlabor der LMU und TU München“ was running very reliable during the last years. The status of the Tandem accelerator will be presented and some technical problems of the past years of operation will be discussed. The MAFF project (Munich Accelerator for Fission Fragments) was suspended due to missing funding. MAFF was planned be the successor of the Tandem accelerator. In the next years the Tandem accelerator will be useful for experiments in the framework of the two clusters of excellence “Origin and Structure of the Universe” and MAP (Munich Centre for Advanced Photonics). The Tandem ion beams are applied for experiments in the field of nuclear astrophysics, AMS with astrophysical implication, for irradiation of cells, tissue and finally animals for cancer therapy studies.
UTTAC University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba
KEK/RSC, Tsukuba
Tokyo University/MALT, Tokyo
Funding: Work supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Programs of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan.
The 12UD Pelletron tandem accelerator was installed at the University of Tsukuba in 1975. In recent years, the main research field of the 12UD Pelletron tandem accelerator has shifted to accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) research from nuclear physics. AMS is an ultrasensitive technique for the study of long-lived radioisotopes, and stable isotopes at very low abundances. The high terminal voltage is an advantage in the detection of heavy radioisotopes. It is important for sensitive measurements of heavy radioisotopes that background interference of their stable isobars are suppressed by AMS measurements. With the multi-nuclide AMS system at the University of Tsukuba (Tsukuba AMS system), we are able to measure long-lived radioisotopes of 14C, 26Al, 36Cl and 129I by employing a molecular pilot beam method that stabilize the terminal voltage with 0.1% accuracy. Much progress has been made in the development of new AMS techniques for the Tsukuba AMS system. As for 36Cl AMS, 36Cl9+ at 100 MeV is used for AMS measurements. The standard deviation of the fluctuation is typically ± 2%, and the machine background level of 36Cl/Cl is lower than 1 × 10-15. This report presents the overview and progress of the Tsukuba AMS system.
ETH/Ion Beam Physics Laboratory, Zürich
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) provides instrumentation originally developed by nuclear physicists more than 30 years ago to measure long lived cosmogenic radionuclides such as 10Be, 14C, 26Al, 36Cl, 41Ca, 129I, U, Pu and Pa at natural levels. In the past ten years impressive progress in the measurement technique has been made and with the appearance of compact low energy radiocarbon AMS systems, a new category of AMS instruments has been introduced. This has resulted in a boom of new AMS facilities with more than 20 new installations over the last five years. But low energy AMS is not limited to radiocarbon only and there is a great potential for 10Be, 26Al, 129I and actinides measurements at compact AMS systems. The latest developments towards the low energy limit of AMS resulted in two new types of systems, the NEC Single Stage AMS (SSAMS) and ETH mini carbon dating system (MICADAS) operating with terminal voltages of about 200 kV only. In addition, systems like the HVEE 1 MV Tandetron or the compact ETH 600 kV system are capable to extent the range of applications at compact systems beyond radiocarbon. These systems will have enormous impact, not only on the use of AMS in biomedical research and on radiocarbon dating but also for research applications with 10Be, 26Al, 129I and actinides.
NEM, Tokyo
The 1.7 MV tandem accelerator RAPID (Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopic Analyzer with Particle Induced X-ray Emission and Ion Implantation Devices), the University of Tokyo has been dedicated to various scientific and engineering studies in a wide range of fields by the ion beam analysis availability, including RBS (Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy), PIXE (Particle induced X-ray emission) and ion implantation. Total accelerator operation time amounted 9,358 hours since its installation with the highest annual operation time recorded in 2007. RAPID-PIXE analysis system has been contributed to many environmental studies by analyzing elemental composition of water and sediments samples. It is also applied to the analysis of several cultural heritages such as a works of gilded frame from Renaissance in Italy. Recently, the low level ion irradiation system was also developed and applied for the study of CR-39 track detector with proton beam.