Thomas Shea

Instrumentation around the ESS 5MW spallation tungsten target submitted to 2 GeV proton pulses

The 5 MW European Spallation Source, currently in its design phase, includes a linear proton accelerator sending a 2.86 ms long pulse of 2 GeV protons at 14 Hz to a tungsten target. This spallation source distributes thermal and cold neutron beams to a large variety of state-of-the-art neutron instruments, supported by a suite of laboratories and a supercomputing data management and software development center. The target is a rotating wheel 2.5 m in diameter composed of helium cooled tungsten plates and produces high intensity gamma and fast neutron pulses (higher than 2E15 n/cm2/s). This paper focuses on the design of 2 types of instrumentation: to monitor target operation and to control the proton beam parameters. Instrumentation mounted on the rotating target (designed for a minimum lifetime of 5 years) to monitor the helium coolant flow and the evolution of irradiated tungsten plates and the target vessel, the target balance, vibrations and displacement is presented as well as a dedicated instrumentation plug installed at opposite the impinging proton beam, which will monitor the target wheel with an LDV and an infra-red camera and perform gamma scanning during and after irradiation. Upstream of the target, a suite of instrumentation will monitor the properties of the 2 GeV proton beam. This suite will consist of imaging devices and multi-wire grids to monitor the beam density distribution at the proton beam window and at the target. An additional imaging system will observe luminescence from the Helium gas between the proton beam window and the target. Beam halo will be monitored by thermocouples located near the edge of the aperture. Further upstream, electromagnetic pickups will measure the beam centroid position, the beam current, and the beam pulses time of arrival. This time-of-arrival signal will allow precise synchronization of the targets rotation and the beam pulse structure.