II.14 — Applications of low-energy accelerators

Particle accelerators have been invented and developed almost exclusively as tools for the exploration of the subatomic world. In the wake of these big high-energy facilities, about forty-five thousand small accelerators are at work every day, almost unnoticed. These accelerators, which represent about 95% of all accelerators operating worldwide, have an energy not larger than 50 MeV. They produce beams of particles and photons, and are used in hospitals, in manufacturing plants, in small research laboratories, in sterilisation industry, in ports and on ships at sea, and even in museums. We will discuss these accelerators and their major applications in domains as radiotherapy, radioisotope production, radiation processing and ion implantation.