| Abstract;Accelerators sciences in the world are heading towards two frontier directions, the highest energy regime (LHC, for example) and the regime of the highest intensity and power. In Japan a plan has been discussed among the community to construct the highest power proton accelerators in the world. At KEK, a plan to construct the Japan Hadron Facility (JHF) was proposed jointly by the nuclear science community, neutron science community and the meson science community. It consists of a) 3 GeV proton synchrotron at 200.MU.A (which is 0.6 MW) and b) 50 GeV proton synchrotron at 10.MU.A (which is 0.5 MW). The former will create forefront sciences with pulsed neutron beams, muon beams, and target-fragment type RI beams, whereas the latter will open a new field of hadron physics using high-intensity kaon beams, antiproton beams, neutrino beams and other exotic beams. This proposal was supported also by the neighboring communities in Japan, such as the high-energy physics community and biological science community. Recently, however, a new initiative began for construction of high-intensity proton accelerators in Japan. The idea was to combine the JHF project described above with the Neutron Science Project (NSP) which was proposed by the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI). In the latter, the main focus was neutron sciences with spallation neutron beams. In addition, R&D work on nuclear transmutation was considered. The original plan of the NSP aimed at 5 MW proton beams at the GeV region, using a superconducting linac. Since the summer of 1998 scientists from both KEK and JAERI have been making efforts to combine these two proposals, JHF and NSP, into one unified "high-intensity proton accelerator project". Presently, this joint proposal is under a serious review at the Government towards its funding.... (author abst.) |
