High-power Free-Electron Lasers were made possible by advances in superconducting linac operated in an energy-recovery mode, as demonstrated by the spectacular success of the Jefferson Laboratory IR-Demo. In order to get to much higher power levels, say a fraction of a megawatt average power, many technological barriers are yet to be broken. BNL's Collider-Accelerator Department is pursuing some of these technologies for a different application, that of electron cooling of high-energy hadron beams. I will describe work on CW, high-current and high-brightness electron beams. This will include a description of a superconducting, laser-photocathode RF gun employing a new secondary-emission multiplying cathode and an accelerator cavity, both capable of producing of the order of one ampere average current.

We present the design, the parameters of a small test Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) facility, which is under construction at Collider-Accelerator Department, BNL. This R & D facility has goals to demonstrate CW operation of ERL with average beam current in the range of 0.1 - 1 ampere, combined with very high efficiency of energy recovery. A possibility for future up-grade to a two-pass ERL is considered. The heart of the facility is a 5-cell 700 MHz super-conducting RF linac with HOM damping. Flexible lattice of ERL provides a test-bed for testing issues of transverse and longitudinal instabilities and diagnostics of intense CW e-beam. ERL is also perfectly suited for a far-IR FEL. We present the status and our plans for construction and commissioning of this facility.