Publications Details
A review of accelerator concepts for the Advanced Hydrotest Facility
The Advanced Hydrotest Facility (AHF) is a facility under consideration by the Department of Energy (DOE) for conducting explosively-driven hydrodynamic experiments. The major diagnostic tool at AHF will be a radiography accelerator having radiation output capable of penetrating very dense dynamic objects on multiple viewing axes with multiple pulses on each axis, each pulse having a time resolution capable of freezing object motion ({approx}50-ns) and achieving a spatial resolution {approx}1 mm at the object. Three accelerator technologies are being considered for AHF by the DOE national laboratories at Los Alamos (LANL), Livermore (LLNL), and Sandia (SNL). Two of these are electron accelerators that will produce intense x-ray pulses from a converter target yielding a dose {approx}1,000--2,000 Rads {at} 1 meter. LLNL has proposed a 16--20 MeV, 3--6 kA linear induction accelerator (LIA) driven by FET-switched modulators driving metglas loaded cavities. SNL has proposed a 12-MeV, 40-kA Inductive Voltage Adder (IVA) accelerator based on HERMES III pulsed power technology. The third option is a 25--50-GeV proton accelerator capable of {approx}10{sup 13} protons/pulse proposed by LANL. This paper will review the current status of the three accelerator concepts for AHF.