Status of GADZOOKS!: Neutron Tagging in Super-Kamiokande

The GADZOOKS! project pursues the upgrade of the Super-Kamiokande detector as a way to efficiently detect thermal neutrons. Inverse beta decay reactions, as well as charged current quasi-elastic (CCQE) scattering of low energy anti-neutrinos (up to a few hundreds of MeV) in SK, produce one positron and one neutron in the final state. Being able to observe the final state neutron in coincidence with the prompt positron would mean that SK could identify these reactions as genuine with very high confidence.GADZOOKS! will open to Super-Kamiokande - and water Cherenkov detectors in general - a wealth of physics currently inaccessible due to background limitations. The most important is observing for the first time the diffuse supernova neutrino background: Super-Kamiokande enriched with gadolinium will discover it after few years of running.The main R&D program towards GADZOOKS! is EGADS: a 200 ton fully instrumented tank built in a new cavern in the Kamioka mine. EGADS incorporates all the necessary subsystems to make GADZOOKS! a reality. In this contribution we will describe EGADS, we will present its current status and discuss the main results and conclusions arrived at so far. In addition, we will analyze other issues specific to the running of GADZOOKS!.