Induction linear accelerators for commercial photon irradiation processing

A number of proposed irradiation processes requires bulk rather than surface exposure with intense applications of ionizing radiation. Typical examples are irradiation of food packaged into pallet size containers, processing of sewer sludge for recycling as landfill and fertilizer, sterilization of prepackaged medical disposals, treatment of municipal water supplies for pathogen reduction, etc. Volumetric processing of dense, bulky products with ionizing radiation requires high energy photon sources because electrons are not penetrating enough to provide uniform bulk dose deposition in thick, dense samples. Induction Linear Accelerator (ILA) technology developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory promises to play a key role in providing solutions to this problem. This is discussed in this paper