The Subcritical Assembly in Dubna (SAD)—Part II: Research program for ADS-demo experiment

Abstract Subcritical Assembly in Dubna (SAD), a project funded by the International Science and Technology Centre, driven in collaboration with many European partners, may become the first Accelerator Driven Subcritical experiment coupling an existing proton accelerator of 660 MeV with a compact MQX-fuelled subcritical core. The main objective of the SAD experiment is to study physics of Accelerator Driven System ranging from a very deep subcriticality up to k eff of 0.98. All experiences with subcriticality monitoring from previous subcritical experiments like MUSE, Yalina and IBR-30 booster mode will be verified in order to select the most reliable subcriticality monitoring technique. Particular attention will be given to validation of the core power–beam current relation. Moreover, some studies have been done to assess possibility of power upgrade for SAD.