14 Feb 2013
HiPER is one of a number of projects identified by ESFRI (The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) as key to the future requirements for scientific facilities within Europe.
The original concept was that ESFRI projects would proceed to construction within this decade, funded from national resources. This remains the case for some projects while others, including HiPER, are of such a scale that construction within this time-horizon is unlikely to be achieved.
In the case of HiPER, the project which was originally conceived as a largely scientific facility to validate the physics of the fast ignition scheme on a single shot basis has become a repetitive ignition machine which will demonstrate power production on the industrial scale, with an estimated cost of 5BEuro. This major step forward has meant that anticipated construction would be likely to start early in the next decade with completion towards 2030, well beyond the original ESFRI time-horizon.
A special panel, commissioned by ESFRI and chaired by Dr. A. Calvia-Götz, met in February 2013 to assess the case for maintaining such long term projects on the ESFRI roadmap.
A team from the HiPER Project, Prof. John Collier (HiPER Co-ordinator), Prof. Wolfgang Sandner (HiPER Executive Board representative), Dr. François Amiranoff (Deputy co-ordinator) and Prof. José-Manuel Perlado (Work Package Leader for Reactors and Materials) presented the delivery strategy and timescales for the project.
Membership of the ESFRI project community is extremely important for the HiPER Project and it is hoped that the panel will recommend that ESFRI status be maintained. The findings of the Panel will be published in July 2013.