The European Spallation Source (ESS) will be a multi-disciplinary research laboratory based upon 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 and transport sciences and cultural heritage.

ESS is an intergovernmental project resembling CERN in Geneva.  Sweden, Hungary and Spain have been contenders for the location of the future ESS for the last three years, although the definition and validation of the project has been far longer.

Spain and Sweden signed this summer an agreement in order to transform the competition process into a collaborative project aiming to create a single ESS project with the location being Lund in Sweden and a site in Bilbao in Spain, which would host an important infrastructure complementary to the main site.

After several years of discussions on the siting, it is now clear that he ESS will be built in Lund in southern Scandinavia.  The ESS will be constructed, financed and operated by those European governments that have an interest in the ESS.

The site situated in Bilbao will house the ESS R&D, prototyping and testing and an accelerator fabrication and assembly facility, as well as a remote experimental, data management and education center for materials science research.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

3:30 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
CEBAF Center, L102/L104

Talk Slides: (Slides)


Dr. Alex Bogacz or Anne-Marie Valente.