Sandia National Laboratories announced on Apr. 27 that its Saturn accelerator, a key X-ray generator in operation since 1987, has undergone significant upgrades after nearly four decades and more than 4,700 firings.
The refurbishment is important because the Saturn accelerator plays a central role in testing and qualifying electronics, subsystems, and materials against X-ray radiation for national security purposes. The improvements are intended to increase reliability and performance of the machine.
Mark Savage, an electrical engineer and technical lead for the project, said, “The goal was to figure out what needed to be right, where the big knobs are, to improve the reliability and performance of Saturn. A lot of things have to go right for a really good shot on any big machine. It doesn’t take many things going wrong to affect it seriously.” Savage also explained that new gas switches were designed for better timing accuracy: “The gas switches were replaced because we wanted to improve the accuracy of their timing. The gas switches were a hard problem because they’re switching millions of volts and hundreds of kiloamps with nanosecond precision.” Adjustments can now be made without removing components from water tanks.
Jeff Tunell, team lead for Saturn operations involved in the refurbishment effort, said his team recently finished fine-tuning the new X-ray source. Ben Ulmen led development on this component: “Saturn works a lot like a dental X-ray, except it is billions of times more powerful and its x-ray pulse is about a million times faster.” The redesigned source allows technicians easier assembly outside the machine itself.
According to Alex Nash, technologist involved throughout both phases of refurbishment: “We had some early issues where we weren’t receiving exactly what we needed, so we ended up putting a team together to travel out to the machine shops and catch issues before the parts were shipped.” Custom manufacturing efforts supported improved alignment and reduced arcing in critical transmission lines inspired by Sandia’s Z-machine design.
Planning began in 2018 with major shutdowns occurring between January and October 2024 as part one was completed; phase two will update additional systems over three or four years. Sandia National Laboratories contributes to U.S. leadership in science through research partnerships according to its official website. The laboratory maintains sites not only in Albuquerque but also Livermore (California), Nevada, Hawaii and Texas according to its official website. It operates under management by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia as part of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration according to its official website.
Sandia focuses on advancing national security through scientific work including nuclear deterrence research according to its official website. Its collaborative efforts span industry partnerships as well as academic institutions according to its official website.
