Design and fabrication of beam dumps at the SR facility of RAON for high-energy proton absorption

The Rare isotope Accelerator complex for ON-line experiments in Korea houses several accelerator complexes. Among them, the mu SR facility will be initially equipped with a 600 MeV and 100 kW proton beam to generate surface muons, and will be upgraded to 400 kW with the same energy. Accelerated proton beams lose approximately 20% of the power at the target, and the remaining power is concentrated in the beam direction. Therefore, to ensure safe operation of the facility, concentrated protons must be distributed and absorbed at the beam dump. Additionally, effective dose levels must be lower than the legal standard, and the beam dumps used at 100 kW should be reused at 400 kW to minimize the generation of radioactive waste. In this study, we introduce a tailored method for designing beam dumps based on the characteristics of the mu SR facility. To optimize the geometry, the absorbed power and effective dose were calculated using the MCNP6 code. The temperature and stress were determined using the ANSYS Mechanical code. Thus, the beam dump design consists of six structures when operated at 100 kW, and a 400 kW beam dump consisting of 24 structures was developed by reusing the 100 kW beam dump.(c) 2023 Korean Nuclear Society, Published by Elsevier Korea LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).