Suppressing Thermal Energy Drift In The LLNL Flash X-Ray Accelerator Using Linear Disk Resistor Stacks

This paper addresses thermal drift in sodium thiosulfate liquid resistors and their replacement with linear disk resistors from HVR Advanced Power Components. Sodium thiosulfate resistors in the FXR induction linear accelerator application have a temperature coefficient of ∼1.8%/C. The FXR Marx banks send an 8kJ pulse through eight 524 cm3 liquid resistors at a repetition rate of up to 1 every 45 seconds. Every pulse increases the temperature of the solution by ∼0.4 C which produces a 0.7% change in resistance. The typical cooling rate is ∼0.4 C per minute which results in ∼0.1% energy drop per pulse during continuous pulsed operations. A radiographic accelerator is extraordinarily sensitive to energy variations. Changes in beam energy produce movement in beam transport, changes in spot size, and large dose variations. If self-heating were the only problem, we could predict the increase in input voltage required to compensate for the energy loss. However, there are other variables that influence the temperature of the resistors such as focus magnet heating, changes in room temperature, changes in cooling water, where the cell is located, etc. Additionally not all of the resistors have equivalent cooling rates and as many as 32 resistors are driven from a single power source. The FXR accelerator group elected to replace the sodium thiosulfate resistors with HVR Linear Disk Resistors in a stack type configuration. With data limited for these resistors when used in oil and at low resistance values, a full characterization needed to be performed. High currents (up to 15kA), high voltages (up to 400kV), and Fast Rise times (<10ns) made a resistor choice difficult. Other solid resistors have been tried and had problems at the connection points and with the fact that the resistivity changed as they absorbed oil. The selected HVR resistors have the advantage of being manufactured with the oil impregnated in to them so this characteristic is minimized while still offering the desired low temperature coefficient of resistance compared to sodium thiosulfate. The characterization experiments and comparison with the sodium thiosulfate liquid resistors will be fully discussed and the final design described.