Page 6 - ILL Annual Report 2019

FOREWORD
THE year 2019 was not without its difficulties for the ILL community (but how boring would life be without them?), but there was
also cause for satisfaction and a significant number of very positive outcomes.
Probably the most important of the latter was the lifting of the formal ‘mise en demeure’ notice issued by the French nuclear safety authority ASN. This was achieved thanks to the enormous effort invested by the ILL’s management and personnel in new management and documentation procedures. I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank most warmly all the ILL staff. In particular, I would like to thank the Reactor Division and its director Hervé Guyon, who, with support from Jérôme Estrade and the ILL’s Director and Science director—Helmut Schober and Mark Johnson, respectively—responded so successfully to the difficult but necessary requirements prescribed by the ASN.
There has also been significant progress on the preparation of a sixth ten-year Protocol amending the ILL’s Intergovernmental Convention. This will extend the life of the Institute for a further ten years, with effect from the beginning of January 2024. The ILL’s Associates have provided very positive input to the process. In the second half of 2019, UK ministry representatives joined them for preparatory discussions within the informal working group recently established by the Associates. Work
on the Protocol is now sufficiently advanced for the discussions to include the ILL’s management and representatives from the Associates’ legal departments. We are optimistic about completing this on time and, hopefully, in the not-so-distant future.
Progress has also been achieved on the unfortunately necessary (given these difficult times) reinforcement of security on the ILL site. In the design of the measures being introduced, efforts have been made to minimise the impact on users’ activities and to preserve as a whole the unity of the EPN campus, which remains one of the world’s leading multidisciplinary venues for research. The ILL Associates have a very strong desire, understandably, to maintain the synergy and productive relations between all the institutes contributing to life on this unique campus (the ILL, ESRF, IBS, EMBL and several other partners, including the LNCMI).
Renewal of the Scientific Membership contracts is now almost complete, with a few final signatures pending. The high level of Scientific Member participation— now representing a quarter of the ILL’s budget—is testimony to the appeal of the high-flux reactor. This offsets the significant disappointment felt at the recent drop
in Italy’s contributions. Italian scientists are scientifically very active; although they submitted a high number of proposals in response to the last call, the drop in Italy’s contributions has resulted in a severe reduction in their access to the ILL’s facilities.
As regards co-ordination at European and international level, the ILL has been asked to chair the European League of advanced Neutron Sources, LENS. Like LEAPS, its sister organisation for synchrotron science, LENS is expected to emerge strongly in the new Horizon Europe framework programme, playing a role in the co-ordination and exchange of knowledge and activities within the super-advanced neutron community.
Finally, I would like to reaffirm the German, UK and French Associates’ commitment to ensuring that the ILL remains the world’s leading neutron source for as long a period as possible. It is, of course, clear that at some point in this decade the ESS will be bringing on line a rising number of instruments with outstanding intensity and timing capacities. The Associates are already working on potential post-ILL scenarios such as a network of compact neutron sources, some of them hopefully based in Grenoble, to preserve the unique capabilities of a renewed EPN Campus beyond 2030.
Gabriel Chardin
CNRS, ILL Steering Committee Chair
© R. Cubitt
© C. Tresca
ANNUAL REPORT 2019