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ESFRI VINDICATES ESS; ESS-I CONFIDENT GOVERNMENTS WILL ACT NOW (19/10/06)
Press Release
Dr Peter Tindemans, chairman ESS-I
The European Spallation Source Initiative (ESS-I) notes with great pride that the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has today announced that it has placed the European Spallation Source (ESS) project in the highest category of maturity on the European Road Map. In so doing ESFRI has both honoured and vindicated the efforts of all the major neutron labs and more than 100 leading scientists from across Europe who for the past 13 years have developed the ESS project. ESS-I is certain that several governments will now officially declare their interest to host ESS by announcing their site and significant financial support for its construction. Europe is finally about to commit to its part in the global neutron strategy agreed by OECD ministers in 1999.
Read here the press release:

(PDF 0.213 MB)

ESSI MEETING TOOK PLACE ON 16 - 17 OCTOBER IN BILBAO (19/10/06)

At the recent ESS-I meeting on 16, 17 October in Bilbao, the President of the government of the Basque Country in Spain announced that his government has concluded a global agreement with the Spanish Central Government on Bilbao’s site candidature. More information coming soon.	Participants at the Bilbao meeting Click to enlarge.

ESS-I WORKSHOP ON INSTRUMENTS FOR ESS (FOR INVITEES ONLY)
The workshop will take place at the Hotel Val des Genets at Rencurel, Vercors, France. 11 - 15 September 2006.
Visit the Workshop site
Scope of the workshop
The ESS reference design was presented on the occasion of the Bonn meeting in 2002. Since then, the SNS has produced its first neutron pulses and the Japanese JPARC project has moved ahead and will create first neutron beams in 2007. On the European front, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has prepared a document reviewing the challenges, risks and returns of competitive large scale Research Facilities for Europe. In particular, in the field of Material Sciences, ESFRI has recognized that the European leadership in neutrons is now decreasing and has proposed that the European Spallation Source (ESS) be a high priority for Europe. ESFRI has also recommended to “upgrade the instruments suite of the international source ILL”.
The original ESS design contained two target stations: a long pulse (LP) station and a short pulse (SP) station, to be fed by the same accelerator.
The European Spallation Source Initiative has decided that the ESS should initially be a 5 MW LP facility, upgradeable to more instruments, more power and more target stations. ESFRI has endorsed this choice. Initiatives from several European governments have recently indicated willingness to host the ESS. For the start of formal negotiations it is important to consider again the list of neutron instruments which would benefit most from the neutron beams produced by a 5MW LP target station.

In this context we are bringing together neutron instrument experts and instrument modelers to discuss and assess potential gains expected from the ESS LP target station with respect to existing neutron sources. It is the purpose of this workshop to propose a list of day-one neutron scattering instruments to be built at the LP-ESS which would could meet the needs of European scientists. Complementarity with existing European sources will be considered in order to offer an optimized suite of neutron facilities to the scientific community. The workshop report will serve as a technical basis document for further discussions at the European level. It is intended to make this document available to the neutron users community in Europe through publication in a scientific journal.

Aims of the workshop
• Summarize previous studies
• Identify relevant parameters
• Improve instrument designs (flux, resolution, etc...) based on discussions, analytical estimates and simulations.
• Write documentation as a journal paper (for Neutron News, NIMA ...). This document should be nearly ready at the end of the workshop.

ESSI MEETING TOOK PLACE ON 22 MARCH IN YORK. MINUTES NOW AVAILABLE
The Minutes are accessible on the Documentation section. This area is restricted to the ESSi members.

Last modified on 25/08/2005