THE DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE OF A WATER COOLING SYSTEM FOR A PROTOTYPE COUPLED CAVITY LINEAR PARTICLE ACCELERATOR FOR THE SPALLATION NEUTRON SOURCE

The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is a facility being designed for scientific and industrial research and development. The SNS will generate and employ neutrons as a research tool in a variety of disciplines including biology, material science, superconductivity, chemistry, etc. The neutrons will be produced by bombarding a heavy metal target with a high-energy beam of protons, generated and accelerated with a linear particle accelerator, or linac. The low energy end of the linac consists of, in part, a multi-cell copper structure termed a coupled cavity linac (CCL). The CCL is responsible for accelerating the protons from an energy of 87 MeV, to 185 MeV. Acceleration of the charged protons is achieved by th