The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is a second generation pulsed neutron source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The SNS is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences and is dedicated to the study of the structure and dynamics of materials by neutron scattering. A collaboration composed of six national laboratories (ANL, BNL, TJNAF, LANL, LBNL, ORNL) is responsible for the design and construction of the various subsystems. With the official start in October 1998, the operation of the full facility has begun in late spring 2006 delivering a 1.0 GeV proton beam with a pulse length of approximately 700 nanoseconds on a liquid mercury target. Within the next two years a beam power of more than one MW should be achieved. The multi-lab collaboration provided a large variety of expertise in order to enhance the beam power delivered by the accelerator by almost an order of magnitude compared to existing neutron facilities. The SNS linac consists of a room temperature and superconducting (sc) structures and is the first pulsed high power sc linac in the world. The compressor ring and the target are the final subsystems that were commissioned during early ’06. The SNS complex had a total of six commissioning runs testing subsystems as they were installed. The various steps are described in the talk and some lessons learned about early high intensity operations are presented.
* SNS is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 for the U.S. Department of Energy. SNS is a partnership of six national laboratories: Argonne, Brookhaven, Jefferson, Lawrence Berkeley, Los Alamos and Oak Ridge.
Organiser(s): D. Brandt (CERN Accelerator Seminar) / DSU-ED
Note: * Tea and coffee will be served after the lecture (~15:30) in the Salle des Pas Perdus.
