Liquid Heavy Metal Applications for Particle Accelerators
Please login to view abstract download link
Lead possesses high density and excellent heat capacity, making it an ideal candidate for managing high power densities across various fields. Revitalized applications of this heavy liquid metal as a coolant in Generation IV nuclear reactors have opened new possibilities, including its use as an operating fluid in particle accelerators, where it becomes a target for laser beams. A notable application is in the breeder blanket of fusion devices, where a Lead-Lithium eutectic is used to produce Tritium. An evaluation of an alternative design for the SPS Beam Dump Facility (BDF) at CERN, which envisions a high-power operation target made of flowing liquid lead, is conducted using various Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes. The behaviour of liquid lead is evaluated, together with the thermal stress on the target vessel induced by the particle beam, modelled based on experimentally obtained data.
