The first meeting of the Technical Advisory Committee of the IFMIF-DONES Spain Consortium (better known as TAC) took place on 13 October.

The TAC aims to serve as an advisory board to the IFMIF-DONES Spain Consortium in making technical decisions critical to its strategic objectives.

The committee is made up of internationally renowned researchers from leading institutions, such as Paola Batistoni, research director at ENEA (Italy), Sehila González, fusion expert at the International Energy Agency (IAEA), Marek Lewitowicz, coordinator of the European Committee for collaboration on fusion at IFMIF-DONES Spain, and Marek Lewitowicz, coordinator of the European Committee for cooperation on fusion at IFMIF-DONES Spain, coordinator of the European Nuclear Physics Collaboration Committee (NuPECC), José Miguel Jiménez, head of the technology department at CERN, Anton Möslang, materials expert at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and John Womersley, former director of the European Spallation Source (ESS).

John Womersley was elected as the coordinator at this first committee meeting. Ángel Ibarra, director of IFMIF-DONES Spain, outlined this committee’s expected future role and presented the project’s current status. Moisés Weber, deputy director of IFMIF-DONES Spain, detailed the first task requiring the committee’s cooperation, namely how to move forward with selecting and integrating new complementary experiments for the infrastructure.

The committee members offered valuable advice on the issues raised and it is hoped that this can be implemented in the following stages of development. The committee will meet several times a year to follow the evolution of the project and contribute to strategic decision-making.