Recent achievements on accelerator operation performance during the NSC KIPT SCA neutron source physical start up. Status of the Kharkiv X-ray generator facility NESTOR

vendredi 8 mars 2024, 11:00 → 13:00 Europe/Paris

102/1-Salle DA - 102-1-Salle DA (IJCLab)

Zelinsky France 2024_talks.pdf

1 Recent achievements on accelerator operation performance during the NSC KIPT SCA neutron source physical start up.

Subcritical Assembly (SCA) Neutron Source facility (NSF) of the National Science Center “Kharkiv Insti-tute of Physics & Technology” (NSC KIPT), Kharkov, Ukraine is Accelerator Driven System with tungsten or uranium neutron generating target and 100MeV/100kW electron linear accelerator as a driver.
The facility physical start-up (PS) was started in the middle of 2020 and completed in August 2021. The program of the facility PS supposes to operate with tungsten neutron generating target and to carry out stepwise fuel element loadings with neutron multiplication factor and reactivity measurements at the end of each loading step.
To ensure physical start-up of NSC KIPT subcritical assembly (SCA) “Neutron Source”, 100 MeV / 100 kW electron linear accelerator should provide stable oper-ation mode with 100 MeV electron beam energy, 20 Hz repetition rate, 35-40 mA pulse beam current, ± 3% beam energy spread and about 3 mm beam sizes. During preparations to the facility start-up (PS) the required beam parameters were adjusted and secured. The accelerator showed the stable operation performance.
The procedure of the accelerator stable operation mode tuning and adjustment secure during the whole period of the PS are described.
200 W electron beam was used for neutron multiplication factor and reactivity measurements.
After loading of 37 fuel assemblies the measured value of neutron multiplication factor was 0.943.
During the facility PS the results of the reactivity and neutron multiplication factor measurements were in a good agreement with results of Monte-Carlo simu-lations for NSC KIPT SCA Neutron Source facility.
All facility systems showed good operation performance.

Orateur: Andrii Zelenskyi

2 Recent achievements on the Kharkiv X-ray generator facility NESTOR

To satisfy up-to-date technical requirements NSC KIPT hard X-ray source on the base of Compton scattering NESTOR should be modified. Essential modernization should be done in accelerator-injector, lattice of the storage ring, RF and optical systems.
Modernizations requires corresponding changes in the design of the high-frequency system, and this, in turn, leads to the need to modernize the laser-optical system. The necessary calculations were carried out to determine the new characteristics of the pulsed laser, the Fabry-Perot cavity, and the lens system matching the beam geometry in the path and the optical resonator. The results obtained confirm the possibility of using an already existing laser-optical system at a new operating frequency of the accelerator with some changes in the design.
The technical proposals of the facility modernizations and results of beam dynamic simulations in the modified facility are presented and described.

Orateurs: Andrii Zelenskyi, Petro Gladkykh