The meeting presented the advances in the design of the systems of the future IFMIF-DONES facility

On November 19th, 20th and 21st of 2019, the 8th Technical Meeting of the WPENS-DONES Project (Work Package Early Neutron Source-Demo Oriented Neutron Source) took place at the ENEA Agency (Agenzia Nazionale per le Nuove Tecnologie, L’Energia e lo Sviluppo Economic Sustainable-National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), in Frascati (Italy).

This semi-annual meeting has as its main objective the presentation of the most significant advances in the design of the different systems of the future IFMIF-DONES facility, at the same time as sharing the results and favouring the synergies between the working groups involved in the WPENS-DONES Project.

In this 8th edition, more than 80 researchers from the different European laboratories, universities and centres of the project participated (CIEMAT, ENEA, KIT, IFPILM, RB, LEI, CEA, SCK.CEN, VIT, VIGNER, IFJ, NCBJ, RACE and F4E). It was remarkable the presence of the WPENS-DONES Project leader, Doctor Ángel Ibarra Sánchez, as well as the four technical managers and the 9 coordinators of the different systems (Safety; Neutronic; RAMI; Logistics, maintenance and remote handling; Buildings and plant systems; Test systems; Lithium systems; Accelerator systems; and Central instrumentation and control systems).

Several researchers from the Fusion Technology Division of CIEMAT attended this meeting, showing their works on the design of buildings and plant systems, safety, accelerator, liquid lithium loop, test systems, control and instrumentation or neutronic. Likewise, the University of Granada was represented by professor Valentín Molina, from the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences, who showed a presentation about the socio-economic impact of the DONES facility in Spain and in the EU.

IFMIF-DONES will be the largest complementary infrastructure to the ITER project, which places Spain and especially Granada – chosen to host this facility – in a privileged position in the race for the demonstration of the viability of fusion energy as means of producing energy commercially for the future.