Deliverable D5: The Multi-Megawatt Target Station (Final Report)

The Eurisol initiative seeks to develop an isotope production facility to provide the scientific community with the means to achieving high yields of isotopes and extending the variety of isotopes thus produced towards more exotic types rarely seen in existing facilities.The Multi-MW converter target at the heart of the projected facility is designed to create isotopes by fissioning uranium carbide (UC) target arranged coaxially around a 4 MW converter target. It is therefore essential that the target be as compact as possible to avoid losing neutrons to capture whilst maximising the neutron flux to enhance the number of fissions per second in the UC targets.The proposed ISOL facility would use both (a) several 100 kW proton beams on a thick solid target to produceRIBs directly, and (b) a liquid metal 4 MW ‘converter’ target to release high fluxes of spallation neutrons which would then produce RIBs by fission in a secondary uranium carbide (UCx) target. An alternative windowless liquid mercury-jet ‘converter’ target to generate the neutrons has also been proposed for this Multi-MW target station.