European Spallation Source: Dead or Alive?

The aspiring European Spallation Source has no doubt suffered setbacks, but whether it is dead or just delayed is a matter of perspective.

“Chances are [the ESS] will be shelved,” says Peter Tindemans, chair of the ESS council and an independent policy expert in the Hague. “Of course, I am not happy about this. It would be a setback for Europe vis-à-vis the United States and Japan,” which expect to complete, respectively, 1.4 MW and 1 MW spallation sources in 2006. If it’s built, the ESS will outdo them, with two 5 MW experimental stations. If it’s not, Europe will cede its long-held leadership in neutron science.

Low marks in Germany’s review of big facilities last year were followed in February by no money for the ESS when that government announced which facilities it would fund (see Physics Today, November 2002, page 24 ). The ESS received another blow early this year, when the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures concluded that the countries of Europe are not presently willing to pay for the project, which would cost an estimated €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion).

“It would be unwise to say there haven’t been setbacks,” says Bob Cy-winski, a neutron physicist at Leeds University in the UK and a scientific adviser to Yorkshire’s bid to host the ESS. “But those of us in the project realize we have a long struggle to get consensus on funding—there’s no single paymaster.” Because the ESS was first appraised in Germany and many of the planners are there, he says, “there’s a feeling that it’s a German project, and that because they don’t want it, it’s failed. That’s not true.” Seventeen nations belong to the European Neutron Scattering Association, an organization that backs the ESS, Cywinski adds. “That leaves 16 nations that we have to talk to.”

For now, though, Europe’s usual big players are otherwise busy: The UK is intent on building a second target station for ISIS, currently the world’s leading spallation source; France is focused on landing the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor; and Germany, in addition to giving the ESS the cold shoulder, has yet to start up its controversial research reactor, the FRM2, and has its eye on a global linear collider (see preceding story).

The best hope for the ESS may lie with regional governments. Interest is strong in Yorkshire, England; Lund, Sweden; and from a coalition of two former East German states. “They are all aware of the advantages of big science investments to develop their regions,” says Kurt Clausen, a neutron physicist who moved from Denmark to Germany’s Research Center Jülich to head the ESS central project team. These regions “want the ESS and work hard to get it. They also have potential access to huge sums of money—the regional development funds, which are much higher than the science budgets.”