The Bonn conference in May 2002 was a heyday for the ESS project. The science case for ESS was presented, its initial instrument suite, and the technical design. The neutron science community was justified in nursing hopes that Europe would finally start deciding to fill in its part of the global strategy for neutrons developed by the OECD Megascience Forum and endorsed by the OECD Ministers in 1999. Establishing three new generation spallation sources in the USA, Japan and Europe was the crucial part of this strategy.

The conference therefore marked the beginning of the formal efforts to get European governments to agree on building ESS. Within the ESS project itself, work focused on completing the base engineering design.

Now, less than a year later, prospects are no longer promising. European governments do not seem prepared to accept that one consequence of their commitment to the Lisbon and Barcelona goals to turn Europe into the most dynamic knowledge-based economy of the world by, among others, investing 3% of its GDP to research in 2010, is to maintain Europe’s lead in neutron science.

Neutron users and scientists more generally should be aware of these negative developments.

This note aims to provide up-to-date information on the status of the ESS project, and the political prospects in Europe.

• Work on the base engineering design.
• The assessment by the German Science Council.
• Politics: the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures.
• Consequences for ESS.
• SNS and J-PARC

Memorandum of Understanding June 2002(PDF, 20 KB)

Extention to Memorandum of Understanding 2000(PDF,25 KB)