THE MYRRHA LINEAR ACCELERATOR

Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) are promising tools for the efficient transmutation of nuclear waste products in dedicated industrial installations, called transmuters. The Myrrha project at Mol, Belgium, placed itself on the path towards these applications with a multipurpose and versatile system based on a liquid Pb-Bi (LBE) cooled fast reactor (70 MWth) which may be operated in both critical and subcritical modes. In the latter case the core is fed by spallation neutrons obtained from a 600 MeV proton beam hitting the LBE coolant/target. The accelerator providing this beam is a high intensity CW superconducting linac which is laid out for the highest achievable reliability. The combination of a parallel redundant and of a fault tolerant scheme should allow obtaining an MTBF value in excess of 250 hours that is required for optimal integrity and successful operation of the ADS. Myrrha is expected to be operational in 2023. The forthcoming 4-year period is fully dedicated to R&D activities, and in the field of the accelerator they are strongly focused on the reliability as pects and on the proper shaping of the beam trip spectrum.