Page 216 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Neutrons for Science
Common to all international collaborations where people of different nationalities work together the ILL staff too work in relaxed and friendly atmosphere irrespective of their country of origin. These international institutions receive their budget from the different contributing countries hence there is competition for funding with national facilities. In the case of the ILL there is competition with local reactor and other neutron sources in member countries, and this has impact on the budget of the ILL. I mentioned earlier the problems with Britain arising from competition between the ILL and the ISIS spallation source.
I think now there are problems on the German side which is struggling to provide for both the budget of the ILL and the new reactor in Munich. While it may be justified that Europe has more than one neutron source it is unfortunate that these have been built separately, country by country (first France with Orphée, then Great Britain with ISIS, and Germany with the Munich reactor), instead of being in collaboration between the three countries.
This appears to be a European weakness. In the USA the construction of research reactors has been done systematically and without costly duplication. Inevitably there has been competition between the various research centres as to where new facilities would be sited. A federal authority finally took the decision. Now a spallation source called SNS115 is under construction at the Oak Ridge laboratory. This source will cost 1400 million dollars, and will operate in 2006. It should produce pulsed beams of neutrons with peak intensity 100 greater than the ILL reactor but much weaker average neutron flux. [2018 addition: As expected SNS is operating since 2006 reaching full power in 2014.]
115 SNS website: https://neutrons.ornl.gov/sns
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