Speaker
Dr
Yacine Kadi
(CERN)
Description
The EURISOL is set to be the ‘next-generation’ European Isotope Separation On-Line (ISOL) Radioactive Ion
Beam (RIB) facility, extending and amplifying beyond the year 2010 the research being performed at the
present RIB facilities in Europe and elsewhere, in the fields of Nuclear Physics, Nuclear Astrophysics and
Fundamental Interactions.
The proposed ISOL facility will include several 100 kW proton beams on a thick solid target to produce RIBs
directly, and a 3-5 MW liquid metal ‘converter’ target to achieve high fluxes of high-energy spallation
neutrons, which later will produce radioactive ions through fission in a secondary uranium carbide (UCx)
target. The design of such an innovative spallation neutron source, several times more intense than the
present ones, requires state-of-the-art simulation codes and concepts to address its technical challenges.
A preliminary conceptual design of a multi-MW liquid Hg converter is presented together with the detailed
thermo-nuclear characteristics obtained using the Monte Carlo code FLUKA. These include power density
distributions, necessary to assess the technical feasibility of the liquid spallation target by means of
computational fluid-dynamics calculations. Special attention is given to the impact of high-energy neutrons
on the fission process in the UCx target, radiation damage to the internal structures and the radioprotection
issues of the facility.
We acknowledge the financial support of the EC under the FP6 "Research Infrastructure Action - Structuring
the European Research Area" EURISOL DS Project; Contract No. 515768 RIDS.
Author
Dr
Yacine Kadi
(CERN)
Co-author
Dr
Adonai Herrera-Martínez
(CERN)
