Several members of the IFMIF-DONES team participed in the 33rd Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2024), which was held at Dublin City University, Ireland, from 22-27 September. This biennial symposium is the most important conference in this field in Europe, bringing together scientists, engineers, industry representatives and exhibitors from all over the world and focusing on the latest developments in fusion experiments and activities.

On Tuesday, September 24, Philippe Cara, DONES Programme Manager, gave a plenary lecture where he presented a comprehensive overview of the project and highlighted the latest developments in its progress.Our colleagues Santiago Becerril, Jorge Maestre, Mario Ruiz, and Manuel Vázquez (UGR-CSN) presented several key aspects of the project in a poster format: the irradiation modules designed for the needs of the future DEMO fusion reactor, progress in the lithium impurity control system, the seismic strategy of the facility and the updated safety analyses of the vacuum chamber in the lithium target system.In addition to the IFMIF-DONES España team, other experts from international research centers, such as Frederik Arbeiter and Yuefeng Qiu from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Wojciech Królas and Urszula Wiącek from the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakow (IFJ) and Kristina Tomić from the Ruđer Bošković Institute (RBI) shared the latest designs of the high flux irradiation modules (HFTM) and the startup modules (STUMM), damage estimation for EUROFER97 samples, and an overview of the irradiation campaign program.

Also noteworthy is the collaboration of universities linked to the project, such as Dragan Poljak from the University of Split, Violeta Redondo from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, and Irene Álvarez from the University of Granada, among others, with contributions related to beam characterization, remote handling, and sample diagnostics.