Toward a Virtual Accelerator Control System for the MYRRHA Linac

The MYRRHA project currently under development at Mol, Belgium, is an Accelerator Driven System expected to be operational in 2025 with the primary purpose to study the feasibility of efficiently transmuting nuclear waste products into isotopes with much shorter lifetimes. The reactor may be operated in subcritical mode when fed by spallation neutrons obtained from a 600 MeV superconducting proton linac hitting a Liquid Pb-Bi target with a maximum current of 4 mA. The challenging aspect of the MYRRHA linac resides in its very high reliability with a Mean Time Between Failure expected to be higher than 250 hours. This paper presents the strategic approach taken during the design of the linac and its foreseen operation to fulfill this stringent requirement. In particular we describe the concept of a beam dynamics based control system called Virtual Accelerator which is mandatory for the linac operation.