IAEA Activities in Support of Sustainable Operation of Electrostatic Accelerator-Facilities

Promotion of nuclear applications for peaceful purposes and related capacity building is among the missions of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Hereby, accelerator-based applications and nuclear instrumentation are among the thematic areas, where the IAEA supports its Member States in strengthening their capabilities to adopt and benefit from the usage of accelerators. The relevant activities are implemented by the Physics Section (PS) of the IAEA as will be briefly presented in this contribution. More specifically, the IAEA supports electrostatic ion beam facilities through different modalities by organizing different forms of hands-on training courses; providing facilitated access to accelerator centres to the interested Member States without such facilities; offering assistance in planning of new facilities, design of beam lines, as well as giving expert advice in fault finding, repairs or O&M aspects of the accelerators and auxiliary instruments through expert missions on request from Member States. The IAEA also manages and maintains the Accelerator Knowledge Portal (AKP) as well as interactive maps of accelerator facilities world-wide. The IAEA Physics Section also has plans to establish an Ion Beam Facility (IBF) as part of its Nuclear Science and Instrumentation Laboratory (NSIL) in Seibersdorf. The most recent examples of training activities include the Training Workshop on Ion Beam Analysis Techniques and Training Workshop on Operation & Maintenance of Electrostatic Accelerators. Only during the past year, three physical expert missions in status assessment and fault finding at accelerator facilities were to Algeria, Croatia and Greece. These and other activities in recent period will be presented. (author)