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SNS
accumulator ring successfully commissioned
DOE's Spallation Neutron Source,
located at Oak Ridge National
Laboratory, has passed another milestone on the way to completion this
year—the commissioning of the proton accumulator ring, which was designed and
built at Brookhaven National
Laboratory. Five Office of Science laboratories—Argonne,
Berkeley,
Brookhaven, Jefferson and
Los Alamos—participated with Oak Ridge in the
design of the SNS project, which will produce the world's most intense neutron
beams to probe the molecular structures of materials. As a user facility, the
SNS is expected to attract researchers from all over the globe.
"The ring is the last
major accelerator element delivered by one of the partner labs in the
six-laboratory project," said SNS Director Thom Mason. "Its successful operation
confirms not just the robustness of the Brookhaven Lab components but also the
full integration of accelerator hardware designed and built using expertise
throughout the national DOE complex. We are looking forward to the first beam on
target later this year."
The accumulator ring is
the final step in a proton's journey through the accelerator before it strikes
the SNS's mercury target, "spalling" away neutrons to be used for research. The
Brookhaven-led accumulator ring design will allow an order of magnitude more
beam power than any other facility in the world.
In SNS operation, the
superconducting linac produces proton pulses traveling at almost 90 percent of
the speed of light. In the ring, the protons within a pulse are "accumulated" to
increase the intensity 1,000-fold. At that point, this now very intense pulse is
extracted and delivered to the mercury target to produce neutrons. This happens
60 times per second.
During its recent
commissioning, after only three days of initial operation, the ring accumulated
protons, which were then extracted and sent to a point just short of the target.
"The successful
commissioning of the accumulator ring—in record time for this type of device—is
a testament to the extraordinary collaboration between Brookhaven and Oak
Ridge," said Jie Wei, who led the Brookhaven team.
The SNS will become the
world's leading research facility for study of the structure and dynamics of
materials using neutrons, with many potential future applications in
telecommunications, manufacturing, transportation, information technology,
biotechnology, and health.
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