Power estimations for the JAEA-ADS linac

Yee-Rendon, B.; Kondo, Yasuhiro; Tamura, Jun; Meigo, Shinichiro; Maekawa, Fujio

JPS Conference Proceedings (Internet), 45, p.011174_1 - 011174_10, 2026/06

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSCP.45.011174

A 30 MW continuous wave proton linac is devised by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) for the use of Accelerator Driven Subcritical System (ADS) technology. The efficiency of the accelerator is crucial for the realization of ADS in terms of minor actinides management. Therefore, it is necessary to assess the overall efficiency of the different components to ensure the accelerator's feasibility. This study estimated the power required to operate RF cavities, considering effects such as beam loading and microphonics. Additionally, the contribution of cryogenics was considered by calculating the heat load generated by the cryomodules, as well as the power consumption of auxiliary systems such as magnets. In this analysis, we will present the efficiency estimations of the JAEA-ADS linac, as well as the methodology used to obtain the results.

Investigation of differences in the mean time between beam trips between normal-conducting and superconducting acceleration cavities

Takei, Hayanori

JPS Conference Proceedings (Internet), 45, p.011175_1 - 011175_7, 2026/06

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSCP.45.011175

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency is working on the research and development of an accelerator-driven nuclear transmutation system (ADS) for transmuting minor actinides. This system is a combination of a subcritical nuclear reactor and a high-power superconducting proton linear accelerator (JADS-linac). One of the challenges in developing the JADS-linac is to reduce the number of beam trips. Until now, the beam trip frequency of the JADS-linac has been estimated from the operation data of the J-PARC linac, which uses the normal-conducting acceleration (NC) cavities. Recently, data on beam trips in the superconducting acceleration (SRF) cavities of the Spallation Neutron Source of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (SNS) have been published. These data are important for the estimation of the beam trip frequency of the JADS-linac. Rather, the SNS data are more appropriate than the J-PARC data, because the JADS-linac uses the SRF cavities. On the other hand, the calculation methods in the published data for the NC cavities of J-PARC and the SRF cavities of SNS are different, so it is not possible to simply compare the two. In this study, the mean time between beam trips (MTBT) of the J-PARC NC cavity and the SNS SRF cavity are compared using the same condition. Specifically, the MTBT of the acceleration cavities connected to a single klystron system was calculated and compared. As a result, the MTBT of the SNS SRF cavity was 5.0 and 8.8 times longer than that of the J-PARC NC cavity for and h, respectively, where is the beam trip duration.

Beam dynamics studies of cavity failures for the initial operation phase of the ESS superconducting linac

Yee-Rendon, B.; Kondo, Yasuhiro; Tamura, Jun; Meigo, Shinichiro; Maekawa, Fujio; Miyamoto, Ryoichi*; Milas, N.*; Eshraqi, M.*

Proceedings of 22nd International Conference on RF Superconductivity (SRF2025) (Internet), p.58 - 62, 2026/04

The European Spallation Source (ESS) superconducting proton linac is currently undergoing commissioning. During the initial operation phase, the final beam energy will be about 800 MeV, reaching a 2 MW power. High reliability and availability are crucial for the success of the ESS science programs and thus operations will be maintained even with failures of main linac components such as cavities and quadrupoles, as long as ~50 percent of the intended power can be achieved. To this end, we developed beam optics strategies to address failures in the cavities of the superconducting linac. Due to the constraints in the RF cavity amplitudes, we implemented a modified version of standard cavity compensation techniques. The results indicated that this strategy enables beam recovery that meets the beam quality specifications, thereby enhancing the availability of the ESS linac.

Estimation of the beam trip frequency of a proton linear accelerator for an accelerator-driven nuclear transmutation system and comparison with the allowable beam trip frequency

Takei, Hayanori

Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 62(11), p.1051 - 1070, 2025/11

https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2025.2523023

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency is working on the research and development of an accelerator-driven nuclear transmutation system (ADS) for transmuting minor actinides. This system combines a subcritical nuclear reactor with a high-power superconducting proton linear accelerator (JADS-linac). One of the factors limiting the advancement of the JADS-linac is beam trips, which often induce thermal cycle fatigue, thereby damaging the components in the subcritical core. The average beam current of the JADS-linac is 32 times higher than that of the linear accelerator (linac) of the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC). Therefore, according to the development stage, comparing the beam trip frequency of the JADS-linac with the allowable beam trip frequency (ABTF) is necessary. Herein the beam trip frequency of the JADS-linac was estimated through a Monte Carlo program using the reliability functions based on the operational data of the J-PARC linac. The Monte Carlo program afforded the distribution of the beam trip duration, which cannot be obtained using traditional analytical methods. Results show that the frequency of the beam trips with a duration exceeding 5 min must be reduced to 27% of the current J-PARC linac level to be below the ABTF.

Design and beam dynamics studies of a chopper for the JAEA-ADS LEBT

Yee-Rendon, B.; Kondo, Yasuhiro; Tamura, Jun; Maekawa, Fujio; Meigo, Shinichiro

Proceedings of 21st Annual Meeting of Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (Internet), p.205 - 209, 2024/10

https://www.pasj.jp/web_publish/pasj2024/proceedings/PDF/WEP0/WEP001.pdf

The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) designs a 30-MW CW proton linear accelerator (linac) as a key component for the accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS) project, aimed at nuclear waste management. The low energy beam transport (LEBT) in JAEA-ADS uses charge neutralization to minimize space-charge effects, which are the primary cause of beam loss in high-power accelerators. During commissioning and power ramp-up, precise control of the duty cycle is required for safety and machine protection; thus, a chopper system will be installed to manage the beam power. The chopper is located at the LEBT, to facilitate the disposal of the excess beam power, but its operation will affect the charge neutralization producing beam transients that could lead to beam loss. To shed light on this, we created a beam optics model for the chopper using an analytic approach to determine the required characteristics like voltage and dimensions, which was confirmed through TraceWin simulations. Subsequently, we analyzed the chopper's impact on space-charge compensation to evaluate the beam transients in the LEBT. This study reports the design of the chopper and its effects on beam performance for the JAEA-ADS LEBT.

The LINACs simulation framework

Yee-Rendon, B.; Jameson, R. A.*; Okamura, Masahiro*; Li, C.*; Jiang, P.*; Maus, J. M.*

Proceedings of 32nd Linear Accelerator Conference (LINAC 2024) (Internet), p.492 - 495, 2024/10

https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-LINAC2024-TUPB077

LINACs is a simulation framework for designing optics and beam dynamics of charged particles in particle accelerators. LINACs is an open-source software that enables the user complete control over all design and simulation parameters of RFQs. This includes beam-driven design, fully 3D simulation using precise quadrupolar symmetry, and rigorous Poisson solution for external and space charge fields. The code can handle simultaneous particle beams with analytical input distributions and allows input beam scans. The software offers a relatively short running time and provides extensive analysis techniques. This work provides a historical overview of the code, presents results from RFQ models, and discusses future developments.

Construction of J-PARC LINAC-RCS beam transport line new vacuum system

Kobayashi, Fuminori; Kamiya, Junichiro; Takahashi, Hiroki; Suzuki, Yasuo*; Tasaki, Ryuta*

JAEA-Technology 2024-007, 28 Pages, 2024/07

JAEA-Technology-2024-007.pdf:2.52MB

In J-PARC LINAC, the vacuum system is in place to maintain an ultra-high vacuum in the beam transport line (LINAC to 3GeV RCS beam transportation line: L3BT) between the LINAC to the 3GeV synchrotron. The vacuum system is installed in the LINAC and L3BT buildings and consists of vacuum pumps, vacuum gauges, beam line gate valves (BLGVs), and other vacuum. In existing vacuum systems, vacuum equipment is controlled independently for each area, and vacuum equipment can be operated regardless of the status of adjacent areas. This makes it impossible to eliminate erroneous operation due to human error. In addition, when a vacuum deterioration occurs in the beam transport line, the vacuum deterioration ILK signal is transmitted to the BLGV relay unit via the MPS transmission signal, which causes the BLGVs to be forcibly closed. Because the ILK signal transmission range extends to all BLGVs in the L3BT, however, BLGVs in areas unaffected by vacuum deterioration are also forced to close. This could cause problems such as unnecessary open/close operations leading to more frequent maintenance cycles of the BLGVs. In addition, since the BLGV is operated using the MPS signal path, maintenance of the vacuum control system requires work involving the MPS signal path, making it difficult to maintain the vacuum control system alone and making the work complicated. To solve these problems, it is necessary to improve maintainability by separating the signal paths and automatically controlling BLGV separately. Therefore, the vacuum control system was modified and constructed with the aim of realizing a control system that takes into account the safety and efficient maintenance and operation of the L3BT vacuum system. This report summarizes the development and use of the L3BT vacuum system control system.

Development of a tool for cavity failure compensation in superconducting linacs; Progress and comparative study

Plaais, A.*; Bouly, F.*; Yee-Rendon, B.

Proceedings of 14th International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC 23) (Internet), p.4097 - 4100, 2023/09

https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-IPAC2023-THPA060

Reliability in high power hadron accelerators is a major issue, particularly for Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS). For example, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) ADS maximum frequency of beam trips longer than 5 min was set to 42 per year. A significant number of breakdowns are caused by the failure of accelerating cavities or by their associated systems. Hence, we studied how these can be effectively reduced. To this end, we developed the numerical tool LightWin that aims to determine the compensation settings for any superconducting (SC) linac automatically and systematically. This tool has been successfully used for the MYRRHA SC linac. In this work, we applied LightWin to compensate for several failure scenarios involving the last section of the JAEA ADS linac and compared the associated retuned settings and beam performance to those found in a previous study with TraceWin.

Measurement of H particles generated by residual gas stripping in the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex linac

Tamura, Jun; Futatsukawa, Kenta*; Kondo, Yasuhiro; Liu, Y.*; Miyao, Tomoaki*; Morishita, Takatoshi; Nemoto, Yasuo*; Okabe, Kota; Yoshimoto, Masahiro

Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research A, 1049, p.168033_1 - 168033_7, 2023/04

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2023.168033

The Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) linac is a high-intensity accelerator in which beam loss is a critical issue. In the J-PARC linac, H beams are accelerated to 191~MeV by a separated drift tube linac (SDTL) and subsequently to 400~MeV by an annular-ring coupled structure (ACS). Because there are more beam loss mechanisms in H linacs than in proton linacs, it is imperative to investigate the beam loss circumstances for beam loss mitigation. Electron-stripping phenomena, which generate uncontrollable H particles, are characteristic beam loss factors of H linacs. To clarify the beam loss causes in the J-PARC linac, a new diagnostic line was installed in the beam transport between the SDTL and ACS. In this diagnostic line, H particles were separated from the H beam, and the intensity profiles of the H particles were successfully measured by horizontally scanning a graphite plate in the range where H particles were distributed. By examining the intensity variation of the H particles with different residual pressure levels, we proved that half of the H particles in the SDTL section are generated by the residual gas stripping in the nominal beam operation of the J-PARC linac.

Availability analysis for the 30-MW proton linac of the JAEA-ADS project

Yee-Rendon, B.; Kondo, Yasuhiro; Tamura, Jun; Nakano, Keita; Maekawa, Fujio; Meigo, Shinichiro

Proceedings of 19th Annual Meeting of Particle Accelerator Society of Japan (Internet), p.286 - 290, 2023/01

https://www.pasj.jp/web_publish/pasj2022/proceedings/PDF/TUP0/TUP006.pdf

Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) is designing a 30-MW proton linear accelerator (linac) as one of the fundamental components for its accelerator-driven subcritical system (ADS) project. ADS accelerators demand extremely high reliability and availability to avoid thermal stress in the subcritical reactor structures. Thus, reliability and availability assessments of the accelerator are mandatory to detect weakness in the lattice designed and evaluate redundancy configurations to fulfill the demanded operation. This study applied the Reliability Block Diagrams (RBD) method to calculate the Medium Time Between Failures (MTBF) for different linac configurations: all the linac's elements in a series configuration and a combination of hot-standby for the low-energy section of the linac and k-out-n redundancy for the high-energy part. The estimation considered the detailed arrangement of the cavities and magnets that compose the linac lattice. In this report, we describe the reliability model of the JAEA-ADS linac, report the MTBF results, and point out the potential route toward operating with the required availability.