Multiple - Linac Approach for Tritium Production and Other Applications

This report describes an approach to tritium production based on the use of multiple proton linear accelerators. Features of a single APTt Linac as proposed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory are presented and discussed. An alternative approach to the attainment of the same total proton beam power of 200 MW with several lower-performance superconducting Linacs is proposed and discussed. Although each of these accelerators are considerable extrapolations of present technology, the latter can nevertheless be built at less technical risk when compared to the single high-current APT Linac, particularly concerning the design and the performance of the lowenergy front-end. The use of superconducting cavities is also proposed as a way of optimizing the accelerating gradient, the overall length, and the operational costs. The superconducting technology has already been successfully demonstrated in a number of large-size projects and should be seriously considered for the acceleration of intense low-energy beams of protons. Finally, each linear accelerator would represent an ideal source of very intense beams of protons for a variety of applications, such as: weapons and waste actinide transmutation processes, isotopes for medical application, spallation neutron sources, and the generation of intense beams of neutrinos and muons for nuclear and high-energy physics research. The research community at large has obviously an interest in providing expertise for, and in having access to, the demonstration, the construction, the operation, and the exploitation of these top-performance accelerators