Page 99 - Neutrons for Sciences and Society

Chapter 5 - The construction of the reactor and the scientific groups
Department at the CENG. They played an important role in the relations with the project group (see below). Later, in reports drafted by the SRC representatives, they attribute a large part of the success of the Institut to the very early recruitment of suitable leaders.
At the end of that year Maier-Leibnitz wrote a text for the Steering Committee entitled “The role of the high flux reactor in solid state and liquid research”74. It began with a review of how this work was conducted at Oak Ridge and Brookhaven and made the following criticism of use of both reactors:
1. Except at Brookhaven these reactors are not dedicated to the output from the neutron beam tubes, and hence are not optimised for this type of research.
2. Experiments are performed by specialists in neutron physics rather than by solid-state physicists.
3. There is weakness in theoretical physics at the reactors.
4. There are insufficient physicists at the reactors.
5. There is no organisation of facilities for visiting scientists. 6. The instruments are very conservative and sub-optimal.
This analysis is followed by a list of the benefits of the facilities of the ILL, and proposals to avoid the ILL from suffering faults seen elsewhere. These proposals are important since they define what the ILL should be. In practice the essentials in these proposals were actually realised.
74 The full text is given in appendix 2.
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