Project Progress and Industrial Opportunities at the ESS French Partner Days, 4-5 February 2016

Feb 9, 2016
The half-day programme visiting the laboratories at CEA Saclay and CNRS demonstrated the progress of the French Accelerator and Detector developments for ESS and set the stage for the full day programme at the French Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research the following day.

PARIS – Prototypes of large spoke cryomodules, a view inside the activities in clean rooms and a look at a neutron detector; The laboratory visit part of the ESS French Partner event exhibited the impressive facilities at Institut de Physique Nucléaire d’Orsay (IPNO), Laboratoire Léon Brillouin (LLB) and Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l'Univers (IRFU) to the many participants from French institutes and industry. The tour of the laboratories helped visualise some of the prototypes that will later on be produced in series and installed at ESS in Lund as part of the French In-kind Contribution to the project. 

The French contribution to ESS also includes collaboration on six of the instruments: SKADI, NMX, DREAM, C-SPEC, BIFROST and MAGIC. The complete contribution to the instruments represents approximately 2.5 full instruments, distributed among six joint projects. Most importantly the expertise and experience of LLB as a partner will strengthen the complete ESS instrument suite.

The second day of the event, was hosted at the French Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research with a welcome address by the Director General, Dr. Roger Genet, followed by status updates of the projects and presentations of supplier opportunities for the industrial participants, both as commercial assignments or In-kind partnerships. From ESS, Director General, James Yeck presented an ESS Overview and Dr. Mats Lindroos, Roland Garoby and Henrik Carling presented the development within the Accelerator, the Target, and Integrated Control Systems respectively. Dr. Shane Kennedy gave an overview of the ESS instrument suite while Prof. Christiane Alba-Simionesco, Director of Laboratoire Léon Brillouin (LLB) summarised the French instrument proposals.

The afternoon session consisted of a more interactive programme with parallel business to business and poster session from ESS, French partners and industry. There were about 160 participants present with a very strong turn out from industry, which is also an indication of the strong French commitment to the ESS. 

France is a major investor in ESS and the capabilities of the French national laboratories and industry are essential to the future success of ESS. ESS is looking forward to the continued cooperation with French institutes and industry as well as identifying future collaboration opportunities for the construction of The European Spallation Source.