Foundation stone for the ESS project

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ESS will be the most powerful neutron microscope in the world and will be used in interdisciplinary research involving the life sciences, physics, nanotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Italy is contributing to the project through the Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR), the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and the National Research Council (CNR).
 
The foundation stone ceremony on October 9th 2014, in the construction site in Lund, Sweden, is officially marking the start of the construction of the European Spallation Source (ESS), the most powerful neutron source in the world. The scientific relevance of this large international project is confirmed by the participation of several hundred members of the European scientific community involved in the ESS. Italy is taking part through the Ministry for Education, University and Research (MIUR), the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste and the National Research Council (CNR).

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“INFN has been participating in the construction of this new European neutron source since 2009 by contributing to the design and construction of crucial components of this accelerator through the National South Laboratories, the Legnaro National Laboratories and LASA” – says Eugenio Nappi, member of the INFN Executive Committee and representative for MIUR in the ESS Steering Committee. “Our high technology know-how combined with the advanced skills of our designers and constructors have enabled INFN to play a decisive role and occupy highly significant posts within ESS”, concludes Mr. Nappi. 
 
“The active participation of Elettra and of the other Italian partners in the European Spallation Source – comments Alfonso Franciosi, president of Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste - is a priceless opportunity for our country, both from the scientific and the industrial points of view. What’s more, our scientific institutions will thus be able to collaborate, grow jointly and become a reference point for the Europe of Knowledge”. “Elettra – adds Franciosi - is very proud to have contributed from the outset and in such a tangible manner to this project, and is pleased to continue making its know-how and state-of-the art infrastructures available to this ambitious objective”.
 
“The European Spallation Source is an example of a scientific infrastructure jointly conceived, designed and achieved in a European perspective” - says Luigi Nicolais, president of the National research Council. “From the very beginning this project has emerged as more than the mere sum of the efforts by the individual Member States and the scientific and technical communities involved”.  “The CNR – concludes Nicolais - alongside other national and international research centres, will contribuite to the success of this extraordinary scientific adventure, which is bound to disclose a multitude of new research fields and applications. It is highly significant that the foundation stone ceremony is taking place one hundred years after the pioneering Manifesto to the Europeans, by Albert Einstein and Georg Friedrich Nicolai, which advocated in those early days the need to build a new future perspective for Europe through science”.
 
This event is symbolically laying the foundation for a new generation of European research infrastructures and embodies the successful construction of a pan-European political and economic partnership. Following on two decades of increasingly sophisticated technical design work, scientists, engineers, project managers and builders have now embarked on the construction of the most powerful neutron source in the world. ESS will provide the scientific analysis tools for important discoveries in nanotechnology, life sciences, pharmaceuticals, materials engineering and experimental physics. It is understood that ESS, both through the research that will be performed there and the establishment of the facility itself, will serve as an economic driver for all of Europe (estimated costs are 1 billion 800 million euro).
 
First neutrons are expected by 2019 and the first experiments are scheduled to begin in 2023.
 
Presso Office INFN/Elettra/CNR
 
Last Updated on Thursday, 16 October 2014 09:06