The low energy beam transport line for the MYRRHA accelerator
Résumé
The MYRRHA Project aims at the construction of a new research reactor in Mol (Belgium) to
demonstrate the transmutation feasibility with an accelerator-driven system (ADS). In its subcritical
configuration, the MYRRHA facility requires a proton flux with a maximum power of 2.4 MW
(600 MeV – 4 mA). Such a continuous wave (CW) beam will be delivered by a superconducting linear
accelerator (linac) which must fulfil very stringent reliability requirements to ensure the safe ADS
operation with a high level of availability. The proton beam will be injected in the superconducting
linac with an energy of 17 MeV. The injector will enable to condition and pre-accelerate the proton
beam from 30 keV to 17 MeV. The injector is composed of: the proton source, the low-energy beam
transport line (LEBT), the Radio-frequency quadrupole (RFQ), and a series of CH-DTL cavities. Due to
the very-high reliability requirements it is absolutely necessary to carry out prototyping of all the
elements of the accelerator in order to optimise its operation. In this purpose a LEBT prototype has
been built and is presently installed and operated at LPSC Grenoble (France). An experimental
programme to optimise the tuning of the line, the beam transport and to study the space-charge
compensation mechanism, is in progress. Once the line is commissioned it will be moved to Louvainla-
Neuve (Belgium) to be coupled with the RFQ. We here review the construction and the
commissioning of the LEBT. Some experimental results are discussed, in particular the observed
space-charge compensation effects.