The suppression of isobaric contaminations is of growing importance for many scientific programs using radioactive isotopes produced at isotope separation on-line (ISOL) facilities, such as ISOLDE-CERN. A solid tungsten proton-to-neutron converter has been used for ten years to produce neutron-rich fission fragments from an UCx target while suppressing the production of neutron-deficient isobaric contaminants. The remaining contamination is mainly produced by primary protons that are scattered by the heavy neutron converter and finally impinge on the UCx target itself. Therefore, the knowledge of the energy-dependant cross-sections of proton and neutron induced fission events is crucial in order to evaluate future converter concepts. In this paper, an improved neutron converter prototype design is presented together with the experimentally assessed radioisotope production of Rb, Zn, Cu, Ga and In that validate the converter concept aiming at beams of higher purity neutron-rich isotopes. The experimentally derived release efficiencies for isotopes produced by the 1.4 GeV protons available at ISOLDE are used to evaluate the Monte Carlo code FLUKA and the cross-section codes TALYS and ABRABLA, respectively. © 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.A. Gottberg acknowledges the financial support of the European Community under the ENSAR-JRA2 ActiLab (Contract Number 262010). R. Luis acknowledges the FCT for PhD Grant No. SFRH/BD/60255/2009. The authors thankfully acknowledge the computer resources, technical expertise and assistance provided by CENTRA/IST. Computations were performed at the cluster “Baltasar-Sete-Sóis”, supported by the DyBHo256667 ERC Starting Grant.Peer Reviewe

The ITER Collective Thomson scattering (CTS) diagnostic will measure the dynamics of fusion-born alpha particles in the burning ITER plasma by scattering a 1 MW 60 GHz gyrotron beam off fast-ion induced fluctuations in the plasma. The diagnostic will have seven measurement volumes across the ITER cross section and will resolve the alpha particle energies in the range from 300 keV to 3.5 MeV; importantly, the CTS diagnostic is the only diagnostic capable of measuring confined alpha particles for energies below ∼1.7 MeV and will also be sensitive to the other fast-ion populations. The temporal resolution is 100 ms, allowing the capture of dynamics on that timescale, and the typical spatial resolution is 10–50 cm. The development and design of the in-vessel and primary parts of the CTS diagnostic has been completed. This marks the beginning of a new phase of preparation to maximize the scientific benefit of the diagnostic, e.g., by investigating the capability to contribute to the determination of the fuel-ion ratio and the bulk ion temperature as well as integrating data analysis with other fast-ion and bulk-ion diagnostics.