Switzerland joins ESS collaboration
Switzerland has now formally joined the international ESS collaboration. Through signing the multinational Memorandum of Understanding, Switzerland will now take part in the project planning for and the design of the future research facility European Spallation Source.
The signature has taken place in a ceremony close to Zürich and the Paul Scherrer Institute, where the federal Swiss State-Secretary for Education and Research Mauro Dell’Ambrogio signed the Memorandum of Understanding. The ceremony was held at the occasion of the 8th meeting of the ESS Steering Committee, held on Monday and Tuesday. In the Steering Committee the 17 ESS Partner Countries are represented.
- With Switzerland signing the Memorandum, the engagement in ESS from European governments is further strengthened, which gives us a very stable ground for the European collaboration on ESS, says Lars Börjesson, Chairman of the ESS Steering Committee.
The Memorandum of Understanding “An International Collaboration regarding the European Spallation Source” provides the base for the participation of the Partner Countries in the Pre-Construction Phase of the ESS, the next generation neutron source for materials research and life science. The Memorandum will be complemented later on by agreements detailing the participation of the respective Partner Countries.
- For the ESS project, the Swiss participation in the Pre-Construction work means that we can benefit from the vast Swiss experience in neutron science and from building and operating an accelerator-based spallation source, says Colin Carlile, the ESS Director-General.
Through signing the Memorandum, Switzerland will participate in the project planning and design work that will result in a final technical design for ESS, the building-up of the future ESS organisation and eventually an international convention.
The Swiss contribution to the ESS will be provided by the Paul Scherrer Institute in collaboration with industrial and university partners. Through PSI, Switzerland will contribute with design work and project planning for the ESS target station and several instruments. The instrument R&D and design work will be done in collaboration with scientists in Denmark.
The PSI is the largest research institute in Switzerland, building and operating several large-scale research facilities. One of them is the Swiss Spallation Neutron Source, SINQ, which is one of four accelerator-based spallation sources currently in operation around the world.
For more information, please contact:
Colin Carlile, ESS Director-General. E-mail colin.carlile@esss.se, Tel. 46-(0)46-222 83 02
Marianne Ekdahl, Communications Officer Press & Politics. E-mail marianne.ekdahl@esss.se, Tel. 46-(0)46-222 83 89
ESS IN SHORT:
The European Spallation Source – the next generation facility for materials research and life science
The European Spallation Source (ESS) will be a multi-disciplinary research laboratory based on the world’s most powerful neutron source. ESS can be likened to a large microscope, where neutrons are used instead of light to study materials – ranging from polymers and pharmaceuticals to membranes and molecules – to gain knowledge about their structure and function. ESS will be up to 100 times better than existing facilities, opening up new possibilities for researchers in for example health, environment, climate, energy, transport sciences and cultural heritage.
ESS is an intergovernmental research infrastructure project, and it will be built in Lund in southern Scandinavia. At least 17 European countries will take part in the construction, financing and operation of the ESS. Sweden and Denmark will co-host the ESS and cover 50 percent of the 1,4 B€ investment costs and 20 percent of the operating costs together with the Nordic and Baltic states.
The European Spallation Source ESS AB is a public limited company, today owned by the Swedish and the Danish states. ESS AB is currently working on finalizing the ESS technical design, planning the future research at ESS, preparing for construction, and planning the future international ESS organisation. This is done in collaboration with a large number of international research institutes and laboratories. Construction is expected to start in 2013, the first neutrons to be produced in 2019 and the facility to be fully operational around 2025.
ESS is expected to support a user community of at least 5000 European researchers and will have great strategic importance for the development of the European Research Area. Near by there will be complementary laboratories, such as the synchrotron MAX IV in Lund and XFEL and PETRAIII in Hamburg.
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