The proton linac for the MYRRHA project

H. Podlech , D. Vandeplassche (1) , L. Medeiros Romão (1) , J. Belmans (1) , J.-L. Biarrotte (2) , C. Joly (2) , Maud Baylac (3) , F. Bouly (3) , D. Uriot (4)

1 SCK-CEN - Centre d'Etude de l'Energie Nucléaire
2 IPNO - Institut de Physique Nucléaire d'Orsay
3 LPSC - Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie
4 IRFU - Institut de Recherches sur les lois Fondamentales de l'Univers

One mail goal of the European MYRRHA Project is the demonstration of the feasibility of the transmutation of long-living radioactive nuclear waste. MYRRHA is designed as an acceleratordriven system (ADS) using a high-power cw proton accelerator coupled with a subcritical reactor with a thermal power of up to 100 MW. The linac has to deliver 600 MeV protons with a nominal beam current of 4 mA resulting in a beam power of 2.4 MW. The challenge of the linac development is the very-high reliability of the accelerator to limit the thermal stress inside the reactor. While parallel redundancy will be used in the injector, the required reliability in the main linac can be achieved by serial redundancy. The injector consists of an ECR source, a 1.5 MeV 4-Rod RFQ and a chain of CH drift tube structures. All injector structures are driven by 176 MHz solid state amplifiers. The medium energy section between 17 and 85 MeV consists of superconducting single spoke cavities operated at 352 MHz. The main acceleration is provided by 2 groups of superconducting elliptical 704 MHz 5-cell cavities. The MYRRHA linac layout has a very robust beam dynamics design with low emittance growth rates to avoid excessive particle losses and machine activation. The project will be staged in three phases: The construction of the 100 MeV linac with first experimental stations, the energy upgrade to 600 MeV and the construction of the reactor. The RFQ is presently under construction and will be tested with the already operational ECR source and LEBT section. In a further step the construction of the whole injector and medium energy section is foreseen. This paper describes the linac design, prototype tests as well as the status of construction.

Domaines: Physique des accélérateurs [physics.acc-ph]

H. Podlech, D. Vandeplassche, L. Medeiros Romão, J. Belmans, J.-L. Biarrotte, et al.. The proton linac for the MYRRHA project. 3rd International Workshop on Technology and Components of Accelerator-Driven Systems (TCADS-3), Sep 2016, Mito, Japan. pp.46-59. ⟨hal-01854842⟩