Mechanical Design and Analysis of a 200 MHz, Bolt-together RFQ forthe Accelerator Driven Neutron Source

A high-yield neutron source to screen sea-land cargocontainers for shielded Special Nuclear Materials (SNM) has been designedat LBNL [1,2]. The Accelerator-Driven Neutron Source (ADNS) uses theD(d,n)3He reaction to create a forward directed neutron beam. Keycomponents are a high-current radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ)accelerator and a high-power target capable of producing a neutron fluxof>107 n/(cm2 cdot s) at a distance of 2.5 m. The mechanical designand analysis of the four-module, bolt-together RFQ will be presentedhere. Operating at 200 MHz, the 5.1 m long RFQ will accelerate a 40 mAdeuteron beam to 6 MeV. At a 5 percent duty factor, the time-average d+beam current on target is 1.5 mA. Each of the 1.27 m long RFQ moduleswill consist of four solid OFHC copper vanes. A specially designed 3-DO-ring will provide vacuum sealing between both the vanes and themodules. RF connections are made with canted coil spring contacts. Aseries of 60 water-cooled pi-mode rods provides quadrupole modestabilization. A set of 80 evenly spaced fixed slug tuners is used forfinal frequency adjustment and local field perturbationcorrection