  Canada recently lost its major supply of neutron beams with the closure of
the National Research Universal reactor at Chalk River Laboratories in March
2018. This issue is further exacerbated by the closure of other reactors
abroad, which also served as centers for neutron research. Consequently, there
is a demand for new sources, both for Canada and internationally, as the global
supply shrinks. Compact accelerator driven neutron sources provide an avenue to
realize an intense source of pulsed neutron beams, with a capital cost
significantly lower than spallation sources. In an effort to close the neutron
gap in Canada, a Prototype Canadian compact accelerator driven neutron source
(PC-CANS) is proposed for installation at the University of Windsor. The
PC-CANS is envisaged to serve two neutron science instruments, a boron neutron
capture therapy (BNCT) station and a beamline for fluorine-18 radioisotope
production for positive emission tomography. To serve these diverse
applications of neutron beams, a linear accelerator solution is selected to
provide 10 MeV protons with a peak current of 10 mA within a 5\% duty cycle.
The accelerator is based on an RFQ and a DTL with a post-DTL pulsed kicker
system to simultaneously deliver macro-pulses to each end-station. The neutron
production targets for both neutron science and BNCT will be made of beryllium
and engineered to handle the high beam power density. Conceptual studies of the
accelerator and benchmarking studies of neutron production and moderation with
FLUKA and MCNP, in support of the target-moderator-reflector design are
reported
