Page 28 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Neutrons for Science
reactor core. In the project it was even envisaged to reduce this volume further. Reading this document, authored by engineers, reveals a deep lack of dialogue between them and the future users.
The committee of experts met several times in 1962 to study several variants of high flux reactors. This panel was presided over by Kowarski, and comprised of scientific users of neutrons from member countries of the OECD. Amongst others it included the Briton Peter Egelstaff, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, and myself. It was working with the idea of making a European project on the basis of the British project (although I only remember that a fat document of 160 pages and 60 illustrations describing this had been distributed amongst participants). The discussions of this working group (for which I could find no minutes) were certainly useful; for the first time the scientists from various countries, who knew a little of each other or had only met in congresses, would work together, or in any case, deliberate on a shared scientific aim. In fact these discussions between researchers went very well and showed that there was a considerable community which wished
to use a high flux reactor. Unfortunately budgetary problems (or perhaps political exigencies since the UK had been rejected from the Common Market) led to the UK withdrawing and the whole project was abandoned.
1.2 A new idea
From this failure the ILL was born as a Franco-German project. In fact the first reaction of Jules Horowitz was to say that it was necessary for the French to develop their own project and find
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