The Current Status of the ESS – November 2011

Today the ESS organisation has almost 100 staff here in Lund. These comprise scientists, engineers and administrative staff. They are organised into four Directorates – Science, Accelerator and Target, Programme Office, and Administration.

Around Europe there are perhaps 100 other people directly engaged in collaborative work amongst our 17 partner countries. In addition we have many collaborators around the world who contribute to the project in different ways. At the end of September, we signed a collaboration agreement with ILL in Grenoble, and on 25th November we will sign a Memorandum of Understanding in Tokyo with the Japanese spallation source J-PARC. Global collaboration brings important benefits.

We are currently in the Pre-Construction phase of the ESS Programme, which will last until February 2013. This programme comprises three lines of activity:

– A Design Update in which a Technical Design Report and an updated Costing and Schedule will be produced,

– A Preparation to Build project, in which essential items, necessary to ensure the highest production qualities of key components, will be prototyped, and

– The activities necessary to communicate with and inform our partners – European, national, regional and local – in order to prepare the ground for construction to formally start in 2013.
The ESS negotiating team of Lars Anell and Lars Kolte, nominated by the Swedish and Danish governments respectively, is engaged currently in a fact-finding and informative round of visits to the 17 capital cities to explore how to continue forward to the construction phase of ESS.

We have just held our 4th Science Advisory Committee here in Lund. Around 20 scientists, knowledgeable in the scientific scope of ESS, examine the work of the ESS Science Directorate, giving advice on the scientific utilisation of the facility. At this meeting discussion on the precise parameters of the neutron beam – its duration and its frequency - were debated. Also the methodology of the selection of instrument types was discussed. The consultation process with our future user community was high on the agenda since there is much going on in this area.

We have had a number of meetings this month focusing on the developments in Lund North-East, in particular dealing with the important area between MAX IV and ESS, called Lundamark. Exciting plans for Lundamark are being developed that will give added value to researchers using the instruments of MAX IV and ESS. An exhibition is also being planned for the general public.

An ESS-CERN workshop on Sustainable Large-Scale science facilities, co-organised by the European Research Facilities organisation ERF, was held in Lund in October. It attracted almost 150 delegates from around the world and was the first such meeting to specifically address sustainability. ESS, being a green-filed facility, aims to set the pace in such developments, and our strategy of Renewable, Responsible and Recyclable has attracted quite some attention.

Our 11th Board meeting was held here in Lund on October 10th. The meeting concentrated on a consideration of our four-monthly information report, took decisions on the ESS target design, examined budgetary issues, and matters relating to licensing, connections to the local electrical grid, and confirmed the revised Code of Governance. Questions of recruitment, office space, upcoming decisions, and ESS schedule were also addressed. The next meeting will take place on 5th December. The 9th meeting of the ESS Steering Committee will take place in Aachen on 11th and 12th January.

We are currently putting a lot of effort into the completion of a Conceptual Design Report to be issued by February 2012. This CDR is the first step towards a Technical Design Report to be formally presented in February 2013, the second anniversary of the signing of the ESS MoU.

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