High Energy Industrial Electron Accelerators: A Decade of Progress

Abstract

Although industrial radiation processing is well established (for making tires, cable, and for sterilization) the industry remains a minor part of the world's overall manufacturing base. It has certainly not realized its full potential. But it is growing, and the barriers to implementation are being steadily removed. These barriers have included the lack of knowledge of radiation processes in the manufacturing and chemical industries and a lack reliable high penetration accelerators with sufficient energy to penetrate for sterilization, cross-linking or polymer degradation. The last decade has seen the emergence of accelerators with reliability equal to the other equipment in the process. Reliability has been designed into accelerators by technology choices that permit low stress designs and taking advantage of control tools not formerly available. AECL's IMPELA accelerators are such an example. In the past few years new industrial uses for radiation have moved to the commercial scale, and not in the areas where the pioneers may have predicted. Sewage and medical wastes are still not being routinely treated on any large scale. However, aircraft parts and pulp for viscose (rayon) are poised to become commercial in the next round, and the emergence of wide-scale food irradiation, while still far from a certainty, may soon be at hand. The authors see that the need for more reliable or more powerful electron accelerators has waned. The development thrust has moved to providing a total and integrated system of product tracking and handling equipment, on-line dose monitoring and the provision of X-ray sources. It is in this way that electron accelerators distinguish themselves from gamma sterilization in the traditional market while retaining the inherent high power advantage to open up new applications.