Comparison of DC and pulsed beams for commercial applications

There has been increasing interest in the intense beam community in the applications of pulsed power and intense beam technologies. In this paper we attempt to compare the properties of pulsed, DC, and RF beams from the standpoint of understanding where intense beams can play a natural role, and where DC beams or RF accelerator beams are a more natural choice for application. This work is partly motivated by the availability of the pulsed/DC Nested High Voltage Generator (NHVG) which offers the possibility of producing a range of beam intensities and duty cycles in a single accelerator. In order to understand how to make these assessments, the economics of accelerators are also briefly reviewed.