The Conference SUSEN is the annual event organized by Research Centre Řež (Centrum výzkumu Řež s.r.o.). This year’s edition was focused on thermonuclear fusion. The presentations covered several aspects of fusion research and technologies, providing an overview of different experimental facilities for fusion research and development, selected fusion technologies, nuclear waste strategy, development of sensors for fusion devices as well as education and training activities.

The Director of the IFMIF-DONES Consortium, Ángel Ibarra, participated in this year’s edition, and described the status of the project. The Director informed about its progress and detailed the latest advances related to the particle accelerator, which are the result of the hard work conducted in the past months. Work on IFMIF-DONES has been developed for many years and ‘from a technical perspective, we are very close to the objective: being able to start the construction of the accelerator once a political decision is made’.

Ángel Ibarra presented an overview of the preparatory projects (IFMIF-EVEDA, WPENS, DONES-PreP, DONES-UGR and DONES PRIME) and the latest advances in engineering design and noted some of the milestones achieved: the design of the international governance model or the commissioning of some experiments such as the Laboratory of virtual reality, the Laboratory for radio control at the University of Granada or the Radiofrequency Laboratory at CIEMAT.

The IFMIF-DONES project is developed under the framework of an ambitious program that the European Union is implementing to develop fusion as a source of energy, in an international cooperation with China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States, partners in ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).