• M.P. Stockli, B. Han, S.N. Murray, T.R. Pennisi, M. Santana, R.F. Welton
  ORNL, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
• D.J. Newland
  ORNL RAD, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Funding: *SNS is managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 for the U.S. Department of Energy
During the first three years, the Spallation Neutron Source is ramping up the rep rate, pulse length, and beam current to reach 1 to 1.4 MW beam power in 2009. This challenges the Front-end with the H^- source designed and built by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Early in 2007, the low-energy beam transport needed to be modified to improve the availability for duty factors in excess of 0.2%. Late in 2007, the H^- source needed to be modified to produce the required 25 mA LINAC beam current during the ~0.4 ms long pulses at 60 Hz. The optimistic 1.4 MW goal requires 38 mA LINAC beam current, which was demonstrated for 4 hours on 12/24/07. LBNL developed a cesium system that uses only 30 mg of Cs to minimize the risk to the adjacent electrostatic LEBT and RFQ. Improved procedures and configuration were needed to generate intense beam currents for long pulses (>0.2 ms). Now optimal beam currents are reached within eight hours of replacing the H^- source. The beam decay appears to be as small as 1% per day, which is compensated by a gradual increase in rf power. The peak performance can be restored by slowly re-cesiating the converter without interupting the neutron production.