Spallation neutron source symposium held in Washington

An important step towards the construction of a new neutron source for the Unitedstates tookplaceonMarch3 and 4,1998. About 250 attendees representing all of the major US neutron scattering facilities joined forces to present a convincing case for the importance of neutron scattering research for science, education and industry. The $1.3 billion Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) project will be built by a consortium of Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). LBNL will be responsible for designing and building the SNS's front-end system, which includes an ion source, beam formation and control hardware, and low-energy beam transport and acceleration systems. LANL will be responsible for the linac, which accelerates the H-beam from 2.5 to 1000 million electron volts. ANL and ORNL will be responsible for developing the neutron scattering instrumentation and moderator designs. BNL will be responsible for the accumulator ring structure, which bunches and intensities the ion beam for delivery onto the mercury target to produce the pulsed neutron beams. ORNL will be responsible for the coordination, installation and operation of the new source, project management, conventional construction, and design and construction of the liquid mercury target.