Today's Partner Profile features Muons, Inc., a small business that has been partnering with Jefferson Lab on accelerator advances that benefit our science programs and other accelerator applications.
Small Business Works on Big Advances in Accelerator Technology
NEWPORT NEWS, VA—Jefferson Lab was just a young lab, only a few years into operation in 2002, when small business partner Muons, Inc. was founded by Rolland Johnson to invent and develop new accelerator technologies for the DOE. As its name suggests, its original focus was to enable technologies for a muon collider, potentially the next atom-smasher to follow CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Inventions and simulations under SBIR-STTR grants with the CASA group led to a $30 M federal appropriation that reinvigorated muon collider enthusiasts.
Over the 18 years since its founding, Muons, Inc. and its subsidiaries have been funded to work with 13 national laboratories and 9 universities to solve challenging technical problems, with a total of about $30 M in DOE contracts and SBIR-STTR grants [i]. For example, Jefferson Lab and Muons Inc. worked together on superconducting energy recovery linacs (ERL) for production of radioisotopes used for medical diagnostics and therapy.
A current focus for Muons Inc. is to advance superconducting Accelerator Driven Subcritical Reactor (ADSR) technology to address global nuclear waste issues and carbon-free energy needs. The newest projects with JLab include rf component development for ADSR and advanced accelerator facilities, like magnetrons to provide low cost highly-efficient alternatives to klystrons.
“The opportunity to work with national labs like Jefferson Lab via the SBIR-STTR program is a boon,” says Johnson. “The sharing of expertise and ideas with exceptional people at the national labs is beneficial for the business and the labs, and ultimately for the nation.”
For more Information on Muons Inc., see http://muonsinc.com.
Contact: Deborah Dowd, Jefferson Lab Communications Office, 757-269-7180, dowd@jlab.org
[i] R.P. JOHNSON, “Industry Role for Advanced Accelerator R&D”, IPAC'16, http://accelconf.web.cern.ch/ipac2016/papers/weib06.pdf , 2016