Status and perspectives of the R&D programs for the XADS linear accelerator

In the last years, several laboratories in Europe have developed programs to study, design and test the main components of a high intensity proton accelerator. The broad field of applications covered by this new generation of accelerators (spallation sources, transmutation, radioactive beams, neutrino beams,...)has contributed to a good synergy by developing complementary activities. These programs have succe- eded in this preliminary stage to propose accelerator designs, which fulfil the required specifications, and to launch R&D programs necessary to prove the technical feasibi- lity of the most critical components. For the XADS, the accelerator must exhibit an extremely low number of beam trips, and the new R&D programs must be focused on reliability and fault tolerance disign.