One of the twenty-four “drift-tubes” in the Alvarez proton accelerator that was part of the High Current Test Facility (HCTF) which operated in Bldg. 610 at CRNL during the 1960s and 1970s. The HCTF was part of a program investigating electronuclear breeding – a process for producing intense neutron sources by spallation through the collision of high energy protons with heavy elements. The “electrically-produced” neutrons could then be captured in a thorium blanket around the accelerator target to produce fissile material.
The left-hand photo shows the face of the drift-tube with the central beam hole while the middle photo shows the opposite face with the surface removed to expose the quadrupole electromagnet that was used to provide focussing for the proton beam. The ~ 15 cm diameter drift-tubes were made of oxygen-free high-conductivity (OFHC) copper and were machined and brazed in the CRNL machine shops.
The drift-tube (with a foreshortened stem) was retained during dismantling of the facility and was presented to one of the researchers as a retirement memento.
