SPIRAL2 at GANIL: Next Generation of ISOL Facility for Intense Secondary Radioactive Ion Beams

To pursue the investigation of a new territory of nuclei with extreme N/Z called terra incognita several projects, all aiming at the increase by several orders of magnitude of the Radioactive Ion Beams (RIB) intensities are now under discussions worldwide. As selected by the ESFRI committee, the next generation of ISOL facility in Europe is represented by the SPIRAL2 Project to be built at GANIL (Caen, France). SPIRAL 2 is based on a high power, MV, superconducting driver LINAC, delivering 5 mA of deuteron beams at 40MeV (200kW) directed on a C converter+ Uranium target and producing therefore up to 5. 10(13) fissions/s. The expected radioactive beams intensities for exotic species in the mass range from A=60 to A=140, of the order of 10(6) to 10(10)pps, will surpass by two orders of magnitude any existing facilities in the world. These unstable atoms will be available at energies between few keV/n to 15 MeV/n. The same driver will accelerate high intensity (100 mu A to 1 mA), heavy ions up to Ar at 14 MeV/A producing also proton rich exotic nuclei. In applied areas SPIRAL2 is considered as a powerful variable energy neutron Source, a must to study the impact of nuclear fission and fusion on materials. Construction of the SPIRAL2 facility is shared by ten French laboratories and a network of international partners. Under the FP7 framework program of European Union called Preparatory Phase for the construction of new facilities, the SPIRAL2 project has been granted a budget of about 4Meuros to build up an international consortium around this new venture. Regarding the future physics program a call for Letter of intents has been launched in Oct 2006 and 8 large International collaborations has been built up around new instruments for SPIRAL2. The status of the construction of SPIRAL2 accelerator and technical R&D programs for physics instrumentation (detectors, spectrometers) in collaboration with EU and International partners will be presented.