Toon Verhoeven

Toon Verhoeven has a BSc and MSc in electrotechnics from the Technical University of Eindhoven. After two years working at an oil company, he joined the Institute of Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen in Nieuwegein. The institute just moved to Eindhoven under the new name DIFFER: Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research. Since the beginning of BrightnESS, Toon also works part time at the Technical University of Delft, where the Reactor Institute is housed.

- I have worked in the fusion energy world for more than 33 years and the past ten years I acted as the Industrial Liaison Officer (ILO) for ITER. When the Netherlands began to think about joining the ESS, they wanted to involve Reactor Instituut Delft at TU Delft and they needed an ILO for ESS - a role that I took on. Participating in BrightnESS was therefore a natural extension of my role as ILO. I am heading the Netherlands’ participation in two of the Work Packages, WP 2 and 6. Along with the UK, the Netherlands is part of the North-West Hub in BrightnESS, where we both do independent work and share a nice cooperation for some of the activities.

The Netherlands is not a member of the ESS yet and thus my work is different from most other participants in BrightnESS. My main goal is to make the Netherlands go from observer status to active member of the ESS. This includes some political work and a focus towards the In-Kind structure of ESS. It is my job to make sure that when the Netherlands do become a member, Dutch companies and universities will be involved in both building and using ESS.

We also do quite a bit of outreach activities and participate in events. Soon we have a big science industry event here in the Netherlands and in November 2016, we will be at the Dutch Precision Fair, with ESS speakers.       

Building and running the ESS requires cooperation between many countries, both in terms of funding and organisational work. I believe that giving so much emphasis to In-kind contributions will set the standard for how big science projects will be built from now on.

My ambition in the project is firstly to get the Netherlands on board the ESS project, and then to secure that Dutch companies are part of the project and that scientists - both from companies and universities – are able to access the ESS to do experiments, once the facilities are up and running.