[en] Soreq NRC has initiated the installation of a new accelerator facility, SARAF (Soreq Applied Research Accelerator Facility). This facility will be used for basic, medical and biological research. Another major activity will be the development and production of radio-isotopes. SARAF is designed as a continuous wave (cw), proton and deuteron accelerator based on superconducting RF technology. SARAF will deliver beam with variable energy between 5 and 40 MeV and currents between 0.04 to 2 mA. In the first step ACCEL has performed a feasibility study to evaluate this 40 MeV proton and deuteron accelerator based on superconducting RF technology, resulting in a design of a prototype superconducting accelerator module driven by a 1.5 MeV per nucleon injector system. The first phase of the project covers the ECR ion source (EIS), the radiofrequency quadrupole cavity RFQ and a prototype superconducting module (PSM) with 6 Half-Wave Resonators of 176 MHz. The goal of the prototype phase is to demonstrate the expected performance of the PSM especially to reach a peak electric field of 25 MV/m corresponding to a peak magnetic field of up to 60 mTesla for the resonators. After the successful acceleration and beam characterisation with the PSM the installation of additional 5 accelerating modules with 8 HWRs each is foreseen to boost the energy up to about 40 MeV