Radioactive Beams from 252CF Fission Using a Gas Catcher and an ECR Charge Breeder at ATLAS

An upgrade to the radioactive beam capability of the ATLAS facility has been proposed using 252Cf fission fragments thermalized and collected into a low-energy particle beam using a helium gas catcher. In order to reaccelerate these beams an existing ATLAS ECR ion source will be reconfigured as a charge breeder source. A 1Ci 252Cf source is expected to provide sufficient yield to deliver beams of up to ~106 far from stability ions per second on target. A facility description, the expected performance and the expected performance will be presented in this paper. This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Physics, under contract W-31-109-ENG-38.