Radioactive Beams from252Cf Fission Using a Gas Catcher and an ECR Charge Breeder at Atlas

An upgrade to the radioactive beam capability of the ATLAS facility has been proposed using²⁵²Cf fission fragments thermalized and collected into a low-energy particle beam using a helium gas catcher. In order to reaccelerate these beams an existing ATLAS ECR ion source will be reconfigured as a charge breeder source. A 1 Ci²⁵²Cf source is expected to provide sufficient yield to deliver beams of up to ∼10⁶far from stability ions per second on target. A facility description and the expected performance will be presented in this paper.