The European neutron science landscape is undergoing significant evolutionary change. The 2016 European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) report, Neutron scattering facilities in Europe: Present status and future perspectives, emphasised the urgent need for a coherent organisation of neutron facilities to address the anticipated neutron gap with a “strategy-led approach”. This action was prescribed to coordinate long-term technical and scientific strategies across facilities, but also to pool the community’s collective authority and expertise in order to guide European decision makers toward the funding and policy actions that will best support neutron scientists and the socially significant science and innovation results they produce. At stake, is the world-leading neutron science ecosystem that Europe has developed over five decades.
The long-term sustainability of ESS needs to be secured, of equal importance is the necessity to coordinate on the long-term sustainability of the entire ecosystem of neutron science in Europe. ESS will be Europe’s next flagship facility, but if it is not able to hold the centre of the broader neutron science landscape, this centre could shift outside of Europe, leaving the future of ESS and European science and innovation compromised.
The neutron is a unique probe with characteristics that cannot be supplanted by other methods. Neutrons allow scientists to understand the world at the atomic and molecular level in a non-destructive manner. This makes neutron science one of the most useful analytical techniques deployed across numerous science and technology disciplines, and an essential complement to completing characterisations created by other methods. Neutrons are an essential tool used in support of the science addressing the EU’s Grand Challenges and have a half-century legacy of significant socio-economic impact in Europe. Neutrons can record,for e.g.the interior dynamics of lithium-ion batteries, reveal obscured minutiae from ancient artefacts or clarify the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Cancerous tumours are treated with radiopharmaceuticals produced with neutrons. Neutrons are critical for industrial and engineering researchers developing more efficient fuel cells for electric vehicles or testing stress and strain during the manufacturing of carbon-free steel. They will contribute to more cost-effective health care devices, advances in quantum computing and artificial intelligence, alternative energy technologies, hydrogen storage, food production and fundamental advances in structural biology.
The objective of BrightnESS² is to ensure long-term sustainability of ESS and the neutron scattering community in Europe.
