The Valencia-based business group has been awarded a contract to carry out decommissioning and nuclear logistic services at the underground accelerator facilities of the CNGS (CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso) project in Switzerland.

The European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), the prestigious high-enerfy physics laboratory that houses the world’s largest particle accelerator, has engaged the Spanish company GDES to undertake decommissioning and nuclear logistic services  for the CNGS (CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso) Target Area Dismantling Project.

It is an initial 3-year contract, extendable up to 7 years that will start in the spring of 2025.

CERN’s Neutrinos to Gran Sasso (CNGS) facility was designed to study the properties of neutrinos – extremely light, hard-to-detect subatomic particles that are fundamental both for natural physical processes and for advancing our understanding of the universe and the laws that govern it. This facility operated using protons from the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) between 2006 and 2012, and was partially dismantled in 2013. However, it’s Target Area remained in place, awaiting radiological cool-down.

The decommissioning of the CNGS Target Area will enable CERN to physically expand and continue its ambitious AWAKE project (Advanced Proton Driven Plasma Wakefield Acceleration Experiment) with an international scientific collaboration of 19 institutes involving more than 90 engineers and physicists.

Located in Geneva, Switzerland, CERN is known globally for operating the largest particle physics laboratory in the world and is a major player in global scientific research alongside the ITER project in Cadarache, France. Its contributions to the field of physics include milestones such as the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its valuable injector complex as well as the World Wide Web. With a community of 10,000 scientists of more than 100 nationalities, CERN drives not only the advancement of science, but also the development of revolutionary technologies that transform the world.

According to Héctor Dominguis, President and CEO of GDES, this contract to provide decommissioning services to CERN in Switzerland “reaffirms our commitment to internationalisation and strengthens our presence in cutting-edge projects”. GDES has been involved since 2019 in the construction of ITER, the world’s largest fusion project, developing and providing painting, coating and penetration sealing services.

For Héctor Dominguis, participation in initiatives at places such as CERN and ITER represents an exciting milestone that means “contributing directly to scientific and technological advances of global scope”. In the case of CERN, the organisation is pioneering research in particle physics, while ITER opens new frontiers in the quest for clean and sustainable energy. “Being part of these projects is not only a top-level technical challenge, but also positions GDES as a stakeholder in the developments that are driving the future of energy and innovation”.

GDES has more than 45 years of experience in the nuclear sector, its main area of operation. GDES contributed to the construction of the main Spanish nuclear power plants at the end of the 1970s and is currently involved in their maintenance and decommissioning. The Valencia-based company has participated in all the decommissioning projects carried out in Spain (from the Andújar Uranium Mill to the José Cabrera nuclear power plant and, now, the Santa María de Garoña nuclear power plant). It is in this field, decommissioning, that GDES is a standard-bearer at European level, participating in various projects in Italy, France, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It is currently involved in projects to dismantle large components at the Latina nuclear power plant in Italy, the Barsebäck and Oskarshamn nuclear power plants in Sweden, and the aforementioned Garoña plant in Spain; it is also engaged in decommissioning and radioactive waste management work at various research centres, from CIEMAT in Spain to the Dounreay reactor research and development centre (United Kingdom) and various sites owned by the Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA) in France.