Proof of Concept Demonstration of a Compact Accelerator

Electron accelerators that produce high duty cycle electron beams with beam energies up to 9 MeV are essential for use in practical Nuclear Resonance Fluorescence and EZ-3DTM imaging technologies. While isotopic identification of shielded materials is now possible via these technologies, it is still necessary to achieve accelerator portability, compactness and reasonable cost of ownership to make possible the widespread deployment of critical special nuclear material (SNM) interrogation and verification processes. With the availability of new materials, computing power, and components that were unheard of 50 years ago, an advanced compact accelerator design is proposed to provide an affordable, high duty cycle, portable accelerator that would match the requirements of high rate individual photon counting and spectroscopy which allow identification of SNM, other contraband and cargo verification. Proposed herein is an advanced electron accelerator which satisfies these needs and operates at a high duty cycle and high beam current while only occupying a very small spatial profile compared to existing machines (including power supplies). In Phase II, a Proof of Concept prototype will be designed, built and tested. As for Phase III, the commercialization probability for the portable, high duty cycle electron accelerator is high, with widespread interest in security scanning as well as a variety of commercial, non-security related applications.