Status report of the energy amplifier concept

We report the main results of study performed at CERN over the last three years by few people and with shoe-string funding on the potential impact of new Accelerators technologies in the field of Energy production from nuclei. Accelerators have been universal tools to nuclear reactions : why not using them to produce practical, sizeable amounts of nuclear transmutations, i.e. to: 1. eliminate unwanted long-lived, radioactive Waste from LWR's; 2. (eventually to produce energy in non-critical conditions, similar to the promises of Fusion and 3. as a substitution of Reactors for the neutron activation of short-lived radioactive elements for industrial and medical applications. - We have studied at the CERN-PS both the energy (heat) produced in nuclear cascades in a sub-critical environment (k=0.90) and the transmutation of unwanted waste in a small lethargy, transparent medium (lead). These experiments have been driven by conceptual studies and elaborate computer simulations of nuclear cascades and extend the well known HEP concepts of "calorimeter". This work, now essentially completed, has unveiled substantial potentialities for practical uses and it is object of a strong activity of technology transfer to industry, including the proposed realisation, probably in Spain, of a pilot demonstration plant of substantial power.