Page 169 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Chapter 6: The start of research activities and the arrival of the British
negotiations with the ILL for the SRC to become a partner of
the ILL. The decision had been communicated to Creyssel on 23 August, and made official on 31 August 1972. It was immediately criticised by Mitchell97, chairman of the SRC Neutron Beam Research Committee. He said the wrong decision had been made, but he was happy that it had finally been made, and he would do his best to complete the negotiations.
The official negotiations began on 29 September 1972. It was convenient to make the fewest possible changes to the statutes of the ILL, and simply make adjustments made necessary
by the presence of an additional partner (working language, membership of committees, etc). It only remained to agree on how the SRC would contribute to the construction costs for
the reactor and instruments already expended by the current partners. An agreement was needed on new instruments now necessary with a new partner. Everything was settled in time for British membership to become effective from 1 January 1973. Changes to the intergovernmental agreement made necessary by the involvement of a third government were signed on 19 July 1974. Apart from changes made necessary by the arrival of a third partner the only significant change relates to Article 2. Instead of the governments making a fixed amounts of money available to the associates this sum would have to be agreed upon unanimously98 each year by the Steering Committee. Also of note in Article 7 is the extension to two years for any notice of termination. The new text remains unchanged to this day.
97 “Reactors: Collaboration at Grenoble”, Nature (1972), 239, p60-61, DOI 10.1038/239060b0
98 In practice this rule proved to pose problems and could lead to the budget being defined by the financial con-
straints of the country with the most budgetary problems.
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