The vacuum system for the Munich fission fragment accelerator

The Munich Accelerator for Fission Fragments (MAFF) is a radioactive ion beam facility which will be installed at the new research reactor FRM-II. This new reactor became critical in Spring 2004. The heart of MAFF, the target-ion source unit will be placed in the through-going beam tube of the FRM-II. This beam tube has been installed, tested and filled with helium in 2001. The cogent authorization procedures and safety levels developed for nuclear power plants are applied for this research reactor also. Therefore, MAFF also has to obey these very strict rules, because the typical 1 g load of 235U in the MAFF source creates a fission product activity of several 1014 Bq after one reactor cycle of 52 days. All vacuum components must withstand a pressure of 6×105 Pa in addition to their UHV acceptability. Even dynamic gaskets must be strictly metallic, because organic compounds would not withstand the radioactive irradiation during the design lifetime of 30 years. Only dry vacuum pumps are suitable: refrigerator cryopumps for the high-vacuum part and five stages of roots pumps for roughing and regeneration.