VERSE Europa has been awarded support from CDTI Innovación, co-financed by FEDER funds, for the development of SAFU: Advanced Safety Systems for Nuclear Fusion Plants. The project represents a major step in VERSE’s strategy to develop proprietary technology for the future fusion-energy sector.
VERSE Europa is pleased to announce the launch of SAFU – Advanced Safety Systems for Nuclear Fusion Plants, an R&D project supported by CDTI Innovación and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER).
The project has a total approved investment of €642,936, with a CDTI contribution of €546,495.60, corresponding to 85% of the eligible budget. This support will allow VERSE to accelerate the development of a new generation of safety and interlock technologies for future fusion reactors.
SAFU addresses one of the key challenges facing the fusion industry: the need for standardised, reliable, scalable and cost-effective safety and protection systems for future commercial fusion plants. Today, safety and interlock systems for experimental fusion facilities and particle accelerators are typically designed specifically for each installation. This creates highly customised solutions, long engineering cycles and limited reusability between projects.
The objective of SAFU is to move beyond this approach by establishing the technological and methodological basis for a standard safety and protection platform that can be adapted to different fusion reactor configurations with minimal customisation. The long-term vision is to create a solution that can operate almost as a “plug-and-play” platform for the safety and interlock needs of future nuclear fusion plants.
A strategic step towards proprietary technology
SAFU marks an important milestone for VERSE Europa. Since its creation, the company has provided specialised engineering and R&D services to major international scientific facilities in the fields of fusion energy and particle accelerators, including projects related to ITER, IFMIF-DONES, ESS, LIPAc and other large-scale research infrastructures.
With SAFU, VERSE takes a further step: moving from specialised engineering services towards the development of its own technology with international commercial potential.
The project builds on the experience accumulated by VERSE engineers in the design, integration and operation of protection systems for critical scientific infrastructure. This know-how will be used to define a new architecture for safety and interlock systems adapted to the specific risks of future fusion plants, including tokamaks and stellarators.
What SAFU will develop
The project will focus on three main technical areas.
First, VERSE will perform a detailed identification of the safety and protection functions required in a fusion plant. This work will analyse the main risks associated with critical plant systems, including superconducting magnets, cryogenics, plasma heating, vacuum systems, diagnostics, electrical systems, fuelling, tritium-related systems, plasma operation and instrumentation and control.
Second, the project will define the hardware and software architecture of the SAFU platform. The goal is to develop a high-availability instrumentation and control solution capable of handling both slow protection functions and fast interlock functions, with reaction times ranging from milliseconds down to sub-millisecond levels where required. The architecture will prioritise industrial technologies, modularity, scalability and, where possible, open-source and open-hardware approaches, avoiding excessive dependence on specific proprietary components.
Third, SAFU will investigate the use of Explainable Artificial Intelligence, or XAI, in the design and operation of safety and protection systems. These methods may support improved configuration, diagnostics, predictive analysis and operational optimisation, helping to increase plant availability, reduce unplanned downtime, improve maintainability and support safer plasma or beam operation.
International collaboration with MOBIIS
SAFU is developed in collaboration with MOBIIS Co., Ltd., a Korean technology company specialising in hardware and software for scientific facilities, nuclear fusion systems and particle accelerators. MOBIIS has extensive experience in the Korean fusion ecosystem, including KSTAR, and in major accelerator projects in South Korea.
Within SAFU, VERSE leads the coordination of the project, the identification of safety and protection functions, the management of requirements, the initial technological development and the study of XAI applications. MOBIIS contributes its experience in formal standardisation methods, reliability and availability analysis, scalability studies and the adaptation of the solution to different fusion-plant configurations, including future DEMO-oriented needs.
This collaboration strengthens the international dimension of the project and reflects VERSE’s positioning as a bridge between European and Asian high-technology ecosystems in the field of Big Science.
Impact and future applications
Fusion energy is expected to become one of the most demanding technological fields in terms of safety, reliability and plant availability. Future fusion reactors will require systems capable of protecting personnel, the environment and high-value plant components, while also supporting commercial operation and high availability.
SAFU is designed to respond to this challenge. By standardising safety and interlock architectures, the project aims to reduce engineering costs, shorten development times and increase the reproducibility of protection systems across different fusion projects.
Although SAFU is primarily focused on fusion energy, many of the technologies and methodologies developed in the project may also be applicable to other sectors where safety, availability and fast protection systems are critical. These include particle accelerators, neutron sources, synchrotron light sources, space systems, defence applications and other advanced industrial facilities.
Strengthening VERSE’s R&D capabilities
The support from CDTI Innovación and FEDER funds is essential for a young engineering company such as VERSE to undertake a high-risk, high-impact R&D project of this scale. A significant part of the investment will be dedicated to specialised engineering work, recruitment and consolidation of VERSE’s internal R&D capabilities.
For VERSE, SAFU is not only a technological project. It is also a strategic platform to build long-term know-how, strengthen international partnerships and position the company as a reference engineering firm in safety and protection systems for the emerging fusion industry.
With SAFU, VERSE Europa aims to contribute to the industrialisation of fusion energy by developing the safety technologies that future reactors will need to become reliable, commercially viable and widely deployable.
