Operating experience with a 30 MeV, 500 mu A H/sup -/ cyclotron

The prototype of a new design of H/sup -/ cyclotron for radioisotope production has been built in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). After a brief description of the main design features, the paper describes the beam developments conducted since November 1986. After solving `vacuum runaway' and RF instabilities problems, extracted beam intensities up to 530 mu A have been achieved with the prototype. Low power consumption, high energy conversion efficiency, high reliability, automatic operation and low activation level have also been demonstrated on this prototype.