A high intensity beam absorber corebox for the Fermilab Main Injector abort system

The beam abort system proposed for the Fermilab Main Injector will extract a proton beam from the accelerator in a single turn and direct it to an external beam absorber, of which the corebox is the central component. The primary design constraint of the corebox is to absorb an incident proton beam in a safe, efficient manner and transfer its energy to the primary cooling loop of the Abort Core cooling system. Additionally, it is clearly necessary, due to the induced radioactivity in and around the beam absorber, that the corebox be maintenance-free and have a lifetime equal to that of the Main Injector Accelerator, 20 years. To achieve the above constraints, the corebox design must satisfy three primary aspects; absorb incident and secondary particles such that radiation levels are maintained below PSAR limits, efficiently transfer bulk heat to the cooling system and dissipate mechanical wave propagation resulting from the sudden deposition of beam energy.