Activities on the high current SC proton linac for the TRASCO project

An R and D programme, TRASCO, has started in Italy on an accelerator driven system for nuclear waste transmutation. The large flux of spallation neutrons from a high current CW proton linac accelerator is intended to drive a subcritical system to transmute nuclear waste, while producing energy. Design of the proton accelerator was developed, along with prototype development for its most critical components. A 1.6 GeV linac, operated at 25 mA, allows to reach 40 MW of beam power. A beam power upgrade is achievable using additional couplers per cavity. This design is based on a normal conductive low energy part, which includes a proton source, a RFQ and a DTL, followed by a three-section superconducting linac, at the 352 MHz LEP frequency. The three sections use five cell bi-elliptical cavities, designed to match the proton beam at the normalised velocities β = 0.5, 0.65 and 0.85. The results from preliminary beam dynamics simulations, and a discussion on the expected linac reliability is also presented. (author)