Particle accelerators have become essential instruments to improve our health, the environment, our safety, and our high-tech abilities, as well as to unlock new fundamental insights in physics, chemistry, biology, and generally enable scientific breakthroughs that improve our lives. Accelerating particles to higher energies will always require a large amount of energy. In a society where energy sustainability is critical, keeping energy consumption as low as reasonable possible is an unavoidable challenge for both research infrastructures (RIs) and industry, which collectively operate over 40,000 accelerators. Based on state-of-the-art technology, the portfolio of current and future accelerator-driven RIs in Europe could develop to consume up to 1% of Germany's annual electricity demand. With the ambition to maintain the attractiveness and competitiveness of European RIs and to enable Europe’s Green Deal, we propose to Innovate for Sustainable Accelerating Systems (iSAS) by establishing enhanced collaboration in the field to broaden, expedite and amplify the development and impact of novel energy-saving technologies to accelerate particles.
For many frontier accelerators superconducting RF (SRF) systems are the enabling technology. iSAS will innovate those technologies that have been identified as being a common core of SRF accelerating systems and that have the largest leverage for energy savings to minimize the intrinsic energy consumption in all phases of operation. In the landscape of accelerator-driven RIs, solutions are being developed to reuse the waste heat produced, to develop energy-efficient magnets and to operate facilities on opportunistic schedules when energy is available. The iSAS project has a complementary focus on the energy efficiency of the SRF accelerating technologies. This will contribute to the vital transition to sustain the tremendous 20th century applications of the accelerator technology in a green and energy conscious 21st century.
The iSAS project was approved in Horizon Europe to achieve the objectives of developing new technologies and solutions for reducing the energy footprint of accelerator-driven research infrastructures such as the (HL-)LHC, the ESS and the EuXFEL.
Contact: Jorgen D'Hondt (Jorgen.DHondt@vub.be) and Achille Stocchi (achille.stocchi@ijclab.in2p3.fr).
