Development of the high current electron accelerator

According to the Long-Term Program for Partitioning and Transmutation which was published by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1988, study on the transmutation using an electron accelerator, which was a part of the program, has been carried out in the O-arai Engineering Center. It is the study on converting radioactive fission products for example Strontium and Cesium to stable nuclides by photonuclear reaction caused by high energy gamma-ray made by an electron accelerator. It was thought that a 100 mA-100 MeV (10 MW output power) accelerator would be needed in order to carry out the transmutation study in engineering phase. Therefore, development of the High-Current Electron Accelerator whose target had been 20 mA-10 MeV (200 kW output power) accelerator was carried out as development of elemental technologies on beam stabilization. The conceptual design of the accelerator was started in 1989. In March 1997, the main facility of this accelerator was completed. The test operation was carried out to confirm the performance of the accelerator from January, 1999 to December. As the result, an output of about 14 kW was achieved. In addition, the electron beam of 40 kW could be to accelerate in short time. In this report, the design, fabrication and evaluation of performance of the facilities are presented. (author)