The construction of the Terawatt Accumulator (TWAC) facility
is nearly completed at the ITEP in Moscow. All the major milestones
have been successfully passed with a beam of carbon ions, except
for the final result (the high power beam accumulation), which
is on the way. The beam of C4+ ions delivered by
the laser ion source is accelerated up to the energy of 300
MeV/amu by two steps—in the linear injector I3 and
in the booster synchrotron UK. The accelerated beam is extracted
from the UK ring and transferred to the U10 accumulator ring.
Non-Liouvillian stripping technique (C4+ ⇒
C6+) is applied for stacking of C6+ batches
into the accumulator ring U10. First experiments with extracted
beam of ions have started in 2002. Status of the TWAC components,
current results of activities aiming at mastering the ion beam
stacking technique, and outlook for the TWAC advance are presented.