ESS Conceptual Design Report

The high intensity spallation neutron source ESS is well set to start construction in 2013 and to deliver
�rst neutrons in 2019. The project itself has been 20 years in gestation but there has been a determination
amongst the user community and those working in national and international neutron laboratories in Europe
that it would be built. That determination is what has brought the project in where it is today. The baseline
speci�cation is for a 5 MW power, long pulse facility delivering neutrons to 22 independent instruments for
the study of materials in all their diversity from pharmaceuticals and membranes, to colloids and polymers, to
magnetic and superconducting materials, and on to engineering and archeological artefacts. The user community
is rich and equally diverse, containing approximately 6000 individuals according to �gures produced by ENSA,
the European Neutron Scattering Association.
This Conceptual Design Report represents the work of about 250 individual scientists and engineers around
Europe and the rest of the world, with about 100 of them located in the central team in Lund in southern
Scandinavia where the facility is to be built, with Sweden and Denmark as co-hosts. As this team has grown
over the past 2 years, the work intensity and output has risen considerably. It has taken some time for the
realisation that ESS is �nally to be built, to be fully digested, but it is clear now that this is indeed accepted.
The CDR is a technical document. It does not address organisational matters, nor governance matters and
less so �nancial matters, although it must be emphasised that these subjects are borne in mind in arriving at
the scope of ESS and hence the speci�cation of the facility.
Over the next 12 months, work will be engaged upon which will result in a Technical Design Report being
produced together with a series of other documents such as an updated Costing Report. These documents will
demonstrate the sound foundation upon which the project is to be constructed and are a necessary, but not
su�cient, achievement to lead on seamlessly to construction. Su�ciency would require our 17 partner countries
to reach a political and �nancial agreement. We are con�dent that it is within their capabilities and resources
to do so, and we look to them for such a signal.