Spain and Sweden have signed an agreement over European Spallation Source

Spanish candidature to build the European Spallation Source

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(6/4/2009)

Spain and Sweden have signed an agreement over European Spallation Source

Following discussions held over the weekend between Spanish and Swedish Ministers, Juan Tomás Hernani, the General Secretary of Innovation, and Peter Honeth, the Swedish Secretary of State of Education, signed an agreement on the development of a European Spallation Source (ESS). After the competition to choose a European base, both have agreed to establish a single neutron source but with two centres, the main one in Lund and the other in Bilbao, which will perform an important complementary role.

The Swedish Secretary of State said that “the Bilbao infrastructure brings tremendous added value to the project to create a Neutron Spallation Source as well as playing a key role in the design of the source”, on which construction is due to start in 2011.

The Scandinavian facility will offer significant services to the Spanish neutron community, improving its scientific and technological prospects.

The two countries have thus agreed to assume joint leadership in the redesign phase (2009-2011) and construction (2011-2019) of this important scientific facility.

Spain and Sweden are seizing the opportunity to exploit the energy and knowledge generated during the development process to launch a unique project that will bring science of the highest level to Europe.

Both countries expect to play a central role in both the redesign and the completion of the project.

The Bilbao centre is expected to house the design facilities and the construction of the accelerators, as well as a test laboratory and the option for researchers to carry out experiments in Bilbao. The development of the Bilbao centre involves a major investment, estimated at €150, over the next three years, in addition to the €30 million already commitment by the Spanish and Basque governments for 2009.

The Bilbao centre, which will in the short term focus on the development, design and construction of the technologies that will be installed in Lund, expects to offer research and technological development facilities to other international projects in the physics field, such as IFMIF, SPIRAL2 (France), SNS (United States), or ISIS (United Kingdom). In this manner, the Bilbao centre will be primarily but not exclusively linked to ESS, while working in conjunction with other facilities in Europe, United States and Japan.

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