Development of Cryocooler Systems for NCRF and SRF Cavity and Component Tests at LANL
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Flow Measurements in Pressurized Helium Gas Cooling Channels
Production of metastable Technetium-99 (Tc-99m) is vital to the medical imaging community. It is a radioactive tracer that emits gamma rays as it decays and it is these gamma rays that are then detected through imaging. Tc-99m is extracted from the decay of Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) which has a half-life of about 2-3 days. One method of generating Mo-99 is using accelerator based technology, through the irradiation of Mo-100 using an electron beam. This is part of the NNSA’s mission to produce Mo-99 commercially, within the US, without the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in support of nonproliferation and global security. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is working with NorthStar medical Radioisotopes (NMR) on their efforts to produce Mo-99 from the irradiation of Mo-100 targets. The NMR target consists of an Inconel window that allows the electron beam to penetrate and irradiate a stack of Mo-100 discs. The irradiation process generates large amounts of heat and requires extensive cooling of the Mo-100 targets and target housing using pressurized helium gas. Before beam on target, the design of the target stack and target housing is tested at LANL using laser based diagnostics experiments. We quantify the velocity field of the helium gas around the target housing to estimate whether the cooling provided is sufficient for the design and to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. Fiber optic imaging is also developed for use during cold testing (without beam on target) as well as during irradiation, to obtain real time information on disc performance.
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Pulsed Beam Heating Analysis of Curved Inconel Window with Pressurized Helium Gas Cooling
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is working with NorthStar medical Radioisotopes (NMR) on their efforts to produce Mo-99 through the irradiation of Mo-100 using Rodotron electron accelerators. Two Rhodotron accelerators are used to irradiate a double sided target. LANL collaborates with NMR to experimentally investigate beam effects on the target which consists of two Inconel 718 windows on either side of a stack of Mo-100 discs. LANL simulates the beam heating using an induction heater.
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Modeling Codes Used for LAMP
LAMP team is planning on using multiple computer codes as tools for modeling beam dynamics, electromagnetics, and plasma environment in ion sources. Below is a description of the computer tools we have been using or planning to use in the future. Most of the codes chosen for the LAMP project are capable to model most of the beam dynamics in LAMP. A judicious choice of the appropriate code to use will be based on speed and fidelity of the modeling with faster calculations produced by simplifying some features.
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Numerical Analysis and Flow Induced Vibration Studies in Pressurized Helium Gas Cooling Channels
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is working with NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes (NMR) on their efforts to produce Mo-99 from the irradiation of Mo-100 targets. The NMR target consists of an Inconel window that allows the electron beam to penetrate and irradiate a stack of Mo-100 discs. The irradiation process generates large amounts of heat and is cooled using pressurized helium gas flowing at 400 g/s. LANL provides both numerical analysis support and experimental support. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for both 300 g/s and 400 g/s are performed on the NMR target to analyze the helium flow through the NMR system. The pressure drop, the mass flow rate through each of the disc and window channels and the force applied on the first disc are some of the quantities estimated using CFD. These results will be combined with Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) estimates of heat flux into the system from the electron beam to perform conjugate heat transfer analysis (CHT). The experiments presented in this report focus on the effect of the flow induced vibrations from helium flowing through the coolant gaps between the discs. There is concern that the flow induced vibrations may lead to excessive mass loss of the enriched Mo-100 discs, and the goal would be to mitigate the mass loss. This work presents benchtop tests of flow through a subset of the target stack which involves high speed imaging and displacement measurements used to estimate disc vibration, as well as mass loss.
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New signature method for identifying organic material in atmosphere and water samples
The levels of plastic contamination in the earth’s oceans have steadily increased over the past century, creating a threat to marine life and increasing climate change. Several methods have been developed over the past decade to try to determine the amount and accumulation rate of plastic impurities in the ecosystem. These methods have proven promising but suffer from long measurement times, bulky non-mobile systems, and sample degradation. We propose a smaller, faster system that employs an electron beam to examine seawater samples for polyethylene contamination levels. This process generates a full electron and photon energy spectrum analyses based on the subatomic particles generated from electron interactions. Our simulations have already been developed based on the known molecular composition of seawater and polyethylene, showing the possibility of discerning molecular plastics from microorganisms. With a system the size of a suitcase, this system would be easily deployable to remote locations around the world or installed as a monitoring system for manufacturing facilities. This concept could lead to a new methodology for the science of signatures and be applied to other biological hazard investigations, such as general virus detection.
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X-Ray Development Photos April 2023
The follow three slides are pictures from the deployment of the UCSB x-ray detectors across the DTL tanks. Pictures were taken at the beginning of April.
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Start to End Modeling of a LAMP Strawman Design (From source to end of RFQ)
A strawman design has been put together to exercise the codes that the LAMP group has available to perform a start to end modeling of a system that includes the basic elements of LAMP. The MEBT and DTL are not included in this report.
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Preliminary Design of a LAMP DTL
A preliminary Drift Tube Linac (DTL) layout was designed to create an algorithm for developing the conceptual design of the proposed LANSCE Accelerator Modernization Project (LAMP) final section: the proton linear accelerator from 3 MeV to 100 MeV. Preceding reports describe the proposed layouts of the LEBT, the RFQ, and the MEBT subsections of the linac. Initial estimates of the needed RF power for the DTL are also presented in the report. Present report describes the initial layout of the DTL and the first longitudinal beam dynamics results of the simulations n simplified models. The follow-up reports will include the transverse focusing scheme and beam dynamics in details. Present report in the last section will only describe the planned focusing scheme, based on the existing LANCE DTL.
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Charge per Micro-Pulse Calculation for Ideal Lujan and WNR beams
A complete redesign of the LANSCE front-end is currently under development for the Los Alamos Modernization Project (LAMP). This includes the replacement of the traditional Cockroft-Walton injection system to the newer radiofrequency quadrupole (RFQ) standard. LANSCE accelerates both H- and H+ beams and therefore requires an unconventional application for RFQ systems. A new facility could consider using an independent RFQ for each beam species. However, with the tight space of the LANSCE injector facility, it would prove difficult to instrument. Our initial studies have shown that a single RFQ could be used. The negatively- and positively-charged direct current (DC) beams are shaped, bunched, and accelerated out of phase to each other, with very little interaction. This would work for all possible H+ beam gates and most H- Beam gates. However, a challenge arises with the Weapons Neutron Research (WNR) beam structure that requires the acceleration of bunched beams at higher charge density per pulse. The Long Bunch Enable Gate (LBEG) used for the Lujan center is the best example of a standard injector beam gate. The beam gate, or Macro-Pulse (MP), is 625-us long, separated by at least 8.3 ms. A chopper is used to dice the MP into 1750 mini-Pulses (mP), which are 290-ns wide. After chopping, the MP contains 100,000 micro-Pulses (uP), which are generated by the linac acceleration structure modulated at 201.25 MHz; that is, the micro-Pulses are separated 5 ns apart from each other. The H+ beam structure will be very similar once a chopper is added to its transport. However, the Multi-Pulse Enable Gate (MPEG) used for WNR is significantly different in structure. In this case, the mP is chopped to be only 35-ns wide. This width is then rotated into a single 201.25 MHz RF bucket using the Low Frequency Buncher (LFB). This is proving difficult for the RFQ design in the LAMP upgrade. We began investigating the amount of current sent to WNR for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to find a solution to avoid using the Low Frequency Buncher to simplify the LAMP RFQ design. It is simple to inject and accelerate a 35 mA DC beam in the LAMP RFQ (this is done in numerous accelerator facilities). However, injecting a short bunch with a larger current (once compressed to 5 ns to meet the RFQ frequency) may be difficult. Second, we have a technique called PSR2WNR in which we do not employ the Low Frequency Buncher, but rather accumulate 5 LBEG uP (5 ns) in the PSR and deliver the accumulated beam to WNR every 1.8 us. As a result, we could provide to WNR with five accumulated LBEG uPs every shot. The goal here is to create a rapid kicker with a frequency response of 555 kHz. DARHT-II and other accelerator facilities have constructed kickers of this type for other uses, and our engineers consider this technology as feasible.
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Dual Triggered Beam Extraction Kicker (Rev. 1)
A Blumlein modulator is a relatively inexpensive pulsed power device that can deliver highly repeatable pulses that can be used to change the path of beam pulses. The modulator is primarily built with transmission line cable which is relatively inexpensive. Due to the highly repeatable nature of a Blumlein modulator it is a great tool for kicking beam pulses while producing very little spill or losses in beam current. One of the challenges with a Blumlein kicker is that the length of the kicking pulse output by the modulator is determined by the length of the cables. Cable lengths are set prior to implementation for the desired kicking pulse width. The Blumlein modulator at LANSCE uses a single thyratron which can deliver two 50-kilovolt 1,000-amp pulses of opposite polarity to kicking plates at the same time. This method makes for a very strong kick that is highly repeatable. A method that has been discussed, to deliver a different pulse width, is to add a second trigger that would be fired, once the desired pulse width has been delivered, cutting out the remaining pulse. The second trigger would offer a lot of variability with the pulse width of the kicker. This method has only ever been attempted using low current and relatively low voltages compared to the scale needed to properly kick a beam pulse. This in turn allows for the use of power supplies with a higher repetition rate. The advancement of this standard kicker technology in the accelerator facilities would attract attention within the scientific and engineering communities. The project detailed within will investigate the capabilities of different triggering topologies and design a prototype dual triggered Blumlein kicker modulator capable of variable kicking pulse width.
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Preliminary Design of a LAMP DTL (Update)
Present report is a continuation of the previously published report LA-UR-23-26600 from 19-Jun-2023 and incorporates the mentioned report as its part. All the additional information is contained in the part III of this report, the DTL Transverse Focusing Scheme. A preliminary Drift Tube Linac (DTL) layout was designed to create an algorithm for developing the conceptual design of the proposed LANSCE Accelerator Modernization Project (LAMP) final section: the proton linear accelerator from 3 MeV to 100 MeV. Preceding reports describe the proposed layouts of the LEBT, the RFQ, and the MEBT subsections of the linac. Initial estimates of the needed RF power for the DTL are also presented in the report. Present report describes the initial layout of the DTL and the first longitudinal beam dynamics (BD) results of the simulations in simplified models. The part III of this report includes the transverse focusing scheme and transverse BD in details.
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High gradient research and facilities at Los Alamos National Laboratory [Slides]
A particle accelerator is a scientific instrument that produces a directional stream of electrically charged particles, usually electrons or protons. The accelerator propels particles to high speeds, close to the speed of light. Historically, accelerators play a crucial role in scientific discovery. Nowadays, accelerators produce particle beams for biomedical and material research, manufacturing, energy technology, and Homeland security.
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Modeling LANSCE Line D and RI Beamlines in Elegant and Impact-T
This technical report describes models in Elegant and Impact-T of two LANSCE high-energy beamlines: LineD and Ring Injection. These two beamlines transport the 800 MeV H- beam from the exit of the 805 MHz Linac to the entrance of the PSR. Computer models of all LANSCE high-energy beamlines exist in Transport but include a limited model of the space charge forces. A motivation for using Elegant as an optional beam dynamics code is that the existing model of the PSR is in Elegant, therefore enabling the modeling of the full beam injection scheme. Also, Elegant is a modern code being used by a large accelerator physics community which makes the calculation results more reliable. The drawback is that Elegant has also a limited space charge force model. Therefore, we have opted to include the Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code Impact-T as an alternate beam dynamics code to verify the Elegant calculations. We will use the new Line D and RI models to study beam halo in the transport leading into the PSR, and to evaluate collimation schemes as part of the PSR upgrade. The new models can also be readily used in support of other LANSCE activities.
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Beam Optics Studies for Larger Beampipe Diameters for the LAMP-PSR
The proposed beampipe diameter increase of the PSR beamlines for the LAMP PSR upgrade is expected decrease beam loss due to tuning errors and misalignment. However, a larger beampipe diameter would require increasing the pole-to-pole gap height within all magnets in the PSR (dipole gap, quadrupole bore, etc.). This would in turn affect the extent and profile of the fringe fields at the ends of the magnets, altering the effective length of the magnets and thus the magnetic optics. In this work, we used the simulation code MAD-X to model the PSR lattice for different beampipe diameters. The results of these simulations will be later used to benchmark particle simulations using the code pyORBIT. The MAD-X simulations are described, and the simulation results are discussed in this technote.
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PARMELA simulation of Line-A beamline
This is a short re-work of the previously accomplished simulations, using PARMELA code package. This exercise was done primarily for increase of fidelity and re-formulating the given task for a different beam dynamics (BD) code. The performed simulations showed very good agreement with the abovementioned simulations and confirm the previously produced results with the BEAMPATH code.
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Improving Longitudinal Impedance of Inductive Inserts
Space charge compensation is essential to keeping the beam inside a ring such as PSR in the desired bunch form. The space charges of the ring will lead to the beam debunching, and the most prominent form of compensation for this is the use of RF to bunch the ring back. It has long been known however, that the impedance presented to the beam by its space charge could be compensated by a passive component. Such a passive component has been in use in PSR since 2000, but upgrading it could greatly improve the capabilities of the PSR. Additionally, the inserts presently used would require updating to match any changes in the beam pipe, both mechanically and to increase the space charge compensation.
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System study of the use of ferrite inductive inserts to improve beam in PSR
The effect of space charge has long been compensated in the PSR by offsetting the capacitive impedance of the ring with an inductive component. The effect of space charge will be discussed in detail as it pertains to rings in general, and the history of the use of the inductive insert in the PSR is also presented. An overview of ferrite properties is then provided, as well as methods for measuring ferrite properties, and several candidate ferrites are discussed. Finally, the considerations for designing an inductive insert will be fully presented.
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