Project of electro-cyclotron resonance ion source test-bench for material investigation

Development of new materials for future energy facilities with higher operating efficiency is a challenging and crucial task. However, full-scale testing of radiation hardness for reactor materials is quite sophisticated and difficult as it requires long session of reactor irradiation; moreover, induced radioactivity considerably complicates further investigation. Ion beam irradiation does not have such a drawback; on the contrary, it has certain advantages. One of them is high speed of defect formation. Therefore, it provides a useful tool for modeling of different radiation damages. Improved understanding of material behavior under high dose irradiation will probably allow to simulate reactor irradiation close to real conditions and to make an adequate estimation of material radiation hardness. Since 2008 in Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, the ion beam irradiation experiments are under development at the heavy ion radio frequency quadrupole linac and very important results are obtained already [T. V. Kulevoy et al., in Proceedings of the International Topical Meeting on Nuclear Research Applications and Utilization of Accelerators, IAEA Vienna, Austria, 2009, http://www.pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/P1433_CD/darasets/papers/ap_p5_07.pdf]. Nevertheless, the new test bench based on electro-cyclotron resonance ion source and high voltage platform is developed. The project of the test bench is presented and discussed.