Design of a variable energy linac for alpha particle acceleration and medical radioisotope production

An α-drift tube linac (DTL) is a high-performance linac conceived for radioisotope production. The use of alpha particle beams may make yielding radionuclides hard to obtain with traditional nuclear reactors or by proton accelerators, by exploiting new reaction routes. This approach may lead to better radionuclide impurity profiles, simplifying the radiochemical separation and purification process. The key idea of the α-DTL is to use a high duty cycle linac composed of an electron cyclotron resonance ion source, a radio frequency quadrupole, and a DTL, able to accelerate an average current of 0.5 mA alpha beam from few MeV to 40 MeV, to cover the cross sections of many interesting reactions for radionuclides. The innovative feature of this linac is the capability of regulating energy at the exit of the DTL, by a particular use of the stabilization system (post couplers) of the DTL cavity.