Conventional And Superconducting Rf Linac Designs For The Apt Project

The proton linac for the APT (Accelerator Production of Tritium) project will produce a nominal CW beam power of 130 MW at 1300 MeV. Two designs are currently under consideration. The reference design is composed entirely of normal-conducting (NC) copper accelerating structures, while an advanced-technology design employs superconducting (SC) niobium cavities above 217 MeV. The front-end accelerator for both concepts is a 100-mA NC linac. In this paper, the two APT linac designs are described and compared in terms of key factors, including power efficiency, beam loss control, machine availability and flexibility, and construction and operating costs.