Production
In addition to ARDAP’s accelerator technology Research and Development mission, ARDAP has a Production mission to close accelerator technology supply chain gaps that impact future high-priority Office of Science and other US Government accelerator facilities. ARDAP’s Production program has two parts that address this mission, an Accelerator Technology Maturation program and an Accelerator Technology Production program. The Production program advances the manufacturing readiness level (MRL) of selected critical accelerator technologies up to MRL-7 by funding technology sector production enhancements. The Maturation program ensures that technologies identified for production enhancement have sufficiently high technology readiness levels (TRLs) to be ready for industrialization (i.e., up through TRL-7).
Accelerator Technology Priority Sectors
ARDAP’s Production program is intended to support five primary technology areas identified by the Office of Science programs to be strategically important for future scientific facilities:
- Advances in superconducting accelerator systems, including SRF, SC magnets, and cryogenic engineering;
- Beam physics and high-fidelity computer modeling and control, including better diagnostics, control systems, advanced focusing, and beam cooling techniques;
- Advances in high intensity electron, proton, and ion sources, also including megawatt-class targets for secondary particle sources;
- Higher average-power radiofrequency and ultrafast laser sources, including power handling devices, and high accuracy X-ray optics; and
- High-risk, high-reward R&D in advanced materials, particle sources, beam dynamics, acceleration techniques, and other advanced topics.
ARDAP’s Production Strategy
While the US continues to excel in discovery and innovation, the applied research and development necessary to translate new emerging technologies into products remains a challenge for individual companies, leading to accelerator technology supply chain vulnerabilities for Office of Science and other Government missions. The ARDAP Production program goal is to turn US-based accelerator inventions into products made by a skilled and diverse American workforce, as well as adapting foreign accelerator advances to domestic products as appropriate.
ARDAP takes advice and input from the Office of Science Accelerator Joint Oversight Group, discussions with other Federal agencies, Requests for Information, roundtable meetings, data calls, and Basic Research Needs workshops to help inform its Production funding strategy and priorities. It is likely that an array of different mechanisms will be needed to most effectively develop and support the domestic production capability of different accelerator technologies. A common element for many of these mechanisms will be moving technology as it matures from an R&D state at a National Laboratory or university to industry while building up that industry’s ability to produce that technology at the needed volume. For many technologies, a residual R&D effort should continue for future improvement insertions. This technology maturation and continued R&D will need universities, National Laboratories, and industry to work together in public-private partnerships.
