ULTRA-COMPACT ACCELERATOR TECHNOLOGIES FOR APPLICATION IN NUCLEAR TECHNIQUES

We report on compact accelerator technology development for potential use as a pulsed neutron source quantitative post verifier. The technology is derived from our on-going compact accelerator technology development program for radiography under the US Department of Energy and for a clinic sized compact proton therapy systems under an industry sponsored Cooperative Research and Development Agreement. The accelerator technique relies on the synchronous discharge of a prompt pulse generating stacked transmission line structure with the beam transit. The goal of this technology is to achieve ∼10 MV/m gradients for 10s of nanoseconds pulses and to ∼100 MV/m gradients for ∼1 ns systems. As a post verifier for supplementing existing x-ray equipment, this system can remain in a charged, stand-by state with little or no energy consumption. We detail the progress of our overall component development effort with the multilayer dielectric wall insulators (i.e., the accelerator wall), compact power supply technology, kHz repetition-rate surface flashover ion sources, and the prompt pulse generation system consisting of wide-bandgap switches and high performance dielectric materials.