Muons, Inc, Batavia
UMD, College Park, Maryland
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Funding: Supported in part by the US DOE Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725
Spallation neutron source user facilities require reliable, intense beams of protons. The technique of H- charge exchange injection into a storage ring or synchrotron can provide the needed beam currents, but may be limited by the ion sources that have currents and reliability that do not meet future requirements and emittances that are too large for efficient acceleration. In this project we are developing an H- source which will synthesize the most important developments in the field of negative ion sources to provide high current, small emittance, good lifetime, high reliability, and power efficiency. We describe planned modifications to the present external antenna source at SNS that involve: 1) replacing the present 2 MHz plasma-forming solenoid antenna with a 60 MHz saddle-type antenna and 2) replacing the permanent multicusp magnet with a weaker electro-magnet, in order to increase the plasma density near the outlet aperture. The SNS test stand will then be used to verify simulations of this approach that indicate significant improvements in H- output current and efficiency, where lower RF power will allow higher duty factor, longer source lifetime, and/or better reliability.
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
ORNL RAD, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Funding: The work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, was performed under contract DE-AC05-00OR2275 for the US Department of Energy.
The U.S. Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is an accelerator-based, pulsed neutron-scattering facility, currently in the process of ramping up neutron production. In order to insure that we will meet our operational commitments as well as provide for future facility upgrades with high reliability, we have developed an RF-driven, H- ion source based on a ceramic aluminum nitride (AlN) plasma chamber*. This source is expected to enter service as the SNS neutron production source starting in 2009. This report details the design of the production source which features an AlN plasma chamber, 2-layer external antenna, cooled-multicusp magnet array, Cs2CrO4 cesium system and a Molybdenum plasma ignition gun. Performance of the production source both on the SNS accelerator and SNS test stand is reported. The source has also been designed to accommodate an elemental Cs system with an external reservoir which has demonstrated unanalyzed beam currents up to ~100mA (60Hz, 1ms) on the SNS ion source test stand.
*R.F. Welton, et al., “Next Generation Ion Sources for the SNS”, Proceedings of the 1st Conference on Negative Ion Beams and Sources, Aix-en-Provence, France, 2008
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
LANL, Los Alamos, New Mexico
Funding: Research sponsored by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), managed by UT-Battelle, LLC for the U. S. Department of Energy
Plasmas produced by helicon wave excitation typically develop higher densities, particularly near the radial plasma core, at lower operating pressures and RF powers than plasmas produced using traditional inductive RF coupling methods. Approximately two years ago we received funding to develop an H- ion source based on helicon wave coupling. Our approach was to combine an existing high-density, hydrogen helicon plasma generator developed at ORNL for the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) project with the SNS external antenna H- source. To date we have achieved plasma densities >1013 e/cm3 inside the ion source using <10kW of RF power and <5 SCCM of H2 gas flow. This report discusses the first cesiated H- beam current extraction measurements from the source.
ORNL RAD, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Funding: SNS is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 for the U.S. Department of Energy.
Over the past year the performance of the LBNL H- source has been improved to routinely produce 36 mA when averaged over 0.7 ms long pulses at 60 Hz, measured at the RFQ output of the Spallation Neutron Source accelerator. This is up from 25-30 mA during early 2008, and up from {10}-20 mA during 2007. Some of the recent gain was achieved with refined conditioning and cesiation procedures, which now yield peak performance within 8 hours of starting a source change. The ~10 mg released Cs is sufficient for 3 weeks of operation without significant degradation. Another recent gain comes from the elevated Cs collar temperature, which was gradually implemented to probe its impact on the performance lifetime. In addition, load resistors improve the voltage stability of the electron dump and the lenses, which now can be more finely tuned. The achieved gain allowed for lowering the RF power to ~50 kW for improved reliability. A beam current of 38 mA is required at SNS for producing neutrons with a proton beam power of 1.4 MW. In one case, after 12 days of 4% duty factor operation, 56 mA were demonstrated with 60 kW of RF power. This is close to the 59 mA required for 3 MW operations.
