European Spallation Source
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Sir Patrick Stewart presents a fascinating introduction to the European Spallation Source - one of Europe's most advanced and exciting scientific projects.
What is ESS?
The European Spallation Neutron Source (ESS) is a project to design and construct a next generation facility for research with neutrons. Neutrons can see inside the material: they penetrate deep into matter, and reveal "where atoms are and what atoms do". ESS will be the brightest source of neutrons that will be used for experiments to look inside the materials. It will be the best neutron source world-wide for practically all classes of instruments. ESS will provide much more intensity than the present neutron sources, brighter neutrons beams that, with a suite of more than 40 neutron scattering instruments, will enable scientist of all disciplines to investigate materials in situ, in vivo, in real time and for real life applications. This will have enormous positive consequences for society, industry and technology. It will also retain and strengthen Europe’s lead in neutron science in quality and quantity. 
An early all-encompassing and ambitious version of the ESS project was elaborated in detail by a consortium of 18 European laboratories between 2000 and 2003 with the technical goal to outperform the two other 3rd generation neutron source projects under construction in the USA (SNS) and Japan (J PARC).
The current ESS proposal, as discussed and approved by the ESFRI expert group and endorsed by ENSA, the European user organisation, takes advantage of recent experience and retains the most innovative, cost-effective and lowest technical risk aspects of the original larger project.
What is the Preparatory Phase?
The ESS Preparatory Phase (ESS-PP) project has the overall goal to pave the way to and to facilitate a site decision and a final decision to construct and to operate ESS. Presently, there are three governments (Spanish, Swedish and Hungarian) firmly committed to host ESS in their own country. While the process for reaching an agreement is mainly political and lobbied for by the site contenders, the ESS-PP will have a catalyzing effect for a decision and provide data for a decision as well as for the realisation phase. ESS-PP will concentrate on the site independent aspects while the site specific aspects will be mainly covered by the site contenders.
Next page: ESS - Preparatory Phase Info