Innovation: ENEA part of international project for radiation resistance tests

Making the execution of radiation resistance tests on electronic components and systems for applications in the aerospace, automotive and energy sectors in large research and experimentation infrastructures easier is ENEA's objective in the project RADNEXT, funded with 5 million euro by Horizon 2020 and coordinated by CERN. The project brings together 38 universities, research centers, infrastructures and industries, including the large facilities GSI (Germany ), GANIL (France), STFC (UK), TRIUMF (Canada), PSI (Switzerland) and the European civil and military aviation giant Airbus.

ENEA participates in the project both as coordinator of the access to irradiation plants and by providing the Frascati Neutron Generator (FNG), the most intense 14 MeV neutron source in Europe and one of the most intense in the world,  capable of producing neutrons through deuterium-tritium fusion reactions, with intensities up to 100 billion neutrons per second.

Thanks to its unique characteristics, the FNG is used not only for radiation hardness tests – its role in the RADNEXT project – but also for studies of nuclear physics and engineering applied to fusion energy and the development of new particle detectors. The FNG is located in the ENEA Frascati Research Center and is accessible to private companies and research institutes; in the four years of the project, the FNG will host approximately 20 selected experimental activities, amounting to over 500 hours of neutron tests.

"Our goal is to support industries, universities and research centers by providing free access to facilities for radiation hardness testing of electronic components and systems", pointed out Salvatore Fiore, researcher at the ENEA Fusion and Technologies for Nuclear Safety Department and coordinator of RADNEXT's Transnational Access activities worth over 2.5 million euro, over 50% of the entire project. "Radiation hardness assurance" is increasingly needed in industry and in those small and medium-sized enterprises active in the aerospace and nuclear research sectors, with an increasing number of devices exposed to radiation of greater intensity and for longer time periods, and the consequent need for an appropriate assessment of the radiation resistance of the systems used ".

The network's research infrastructures, consisting of particle accelerators and radiation sources, will host the activities proposed by researchers from scientific institutes and industries, evaluated and accepted by an independent panel of experts. Quarterly calls will select the best proposals, which will have access to the network facilities, with usage costs covered entirely by the project, following the Transnational Access scheme. The first call received over 30 proposals for experimental activities but only ten will be funded. The next call is scheduled for September 2021.

For more information please contact:

Salvatore Fiore, ENEA – Nuclear Technologies Laboratory , salvatore.fiore@enea.it

FNG Virtual Tour http://www.teravista.it/enea_frascati/

Free to reproduce material: https://youtu.be/K4V5FniRrac

Project Website: https://cern.ch/radnext