Quote:
Originally Posted by kang
wow - cool. I'm fascinated by this stuff.
So you're shooting 1.4MW worth of neutrons at some mercury? How wide is the beam?
(You should pull a Big Bang Theory trick like when they shot a high powered laser at a plastic action figure or warmed up their soup!)
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The beam is actually protons. We start off with H- ions, accelerate them to about 90% of the speed of light and then strip the electrons off leaving a proton beam. We sell the electrons on ebay.
We then "accumulate" bunches of protons in an accumulator ring and then fire pulses of protons at ~60Hz at a liquid mercury target. The beam is nominally 70mm high by 200 mm wide. The energetic protons "spall" neutrons off of the mercury molecules which are then moderated (slowed down) and used for condensed matter physics experiments.
As you can imagine, the proton irradiation wrecks havoc on the mechanical properties of most common materials, so our target module wears out and we have to replace it. The module is about as radioactive as the core of Chernobyl right when it exploded, so it is a challenging job, needless to say.
In other words, as Trekkor would say, "it's all guesses"...