The ESS from neutron gap to global strategy

Plans for an international research facility after the cold war

Thomas Kaiserfeld

This is a story of planning, and arguing about, an international European research facility after the end of the cold war; or perhaps rather a sketch of the background to the project, running through the different interests and parties that supported it as well as the obstacles thrown in its path by everything from grudging American colleagues to the national priorities of the European states involved. What were the arguments presented in scientific and political circles for building a new neutron source, and what were the main fears among those who opposed this endeavour? That is the simple empirical question that the following article will elucidate.

All the shifting arguments presented here must not stand in the way of the reasons most frequently presented in the context of ESS, namely those aimed at policy-makers and a wider lay audience, explaining its usefulness in a number of industrial sectors (ESS 1997; ESS 2002). The uses presented there differ from one document to the next, but there are usually about ten different fields of investigation listed that would benefit tremendously from the realization of a more intense spallation neutron source. Among the most commonly named applications are those within materials science, the environmental sciences, nanotechnology, biology, biotechnology, and medicine. There is also mention of the potential contributions to sciences such as chemistry and particle physics. Leaving aside these well-worn arguments, however, I will concentrate on scrutinizing the arguments used in policy contexts.

The problem of the background of ESS can be connected to current research on the international politics of science and technology in the context of very large research facilities. From this point of view it is easy to understand the idea of the ESS as a reaction to the American reconstruction of science in Europe during the cold war. During this period, the US managed to secure scientific and technological leadership by shaping the practices and institutions in Western Europe through a management of control by sharing and denying access to information that still persists (Krige 2006; Krige 2010). I will here try to contrast the view of American information hegemony with scientific internationalism and military isolationism stretching beyond the cold war into the twenty-first century, showing how relations in the area of neutron science created both conflict and cooperation in the decade following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Especially interesting here are the arguments between Europeans and Americans, such as the one in the mid-1990s regarding free access to research facilities and the possibility of open-door policies.

Neutron science is an especially rewarding field from this point of view because of its transformation starting in the 1970s from a research area with clear military and nuclear power applications, reliant on experiments using neutrons from fission reactors, to one of a more heterogeneous character with industrial applications ranging from materials science to biology. This trend towards widening applicability became increasingly important in different campaigns for the building of new neutron sources during the cold war, a shift away from military applications that marked science policies more generally (Elzinga 2012). The arguments in favour of the new facilities were boosted further with the introduction of a new type of neutron sources technique in Japan, the US, and the UK using spallation. This dual transformation, on the one hand from military and energy applications to a broader set of industrially relevant uses and, on the other hand, from a parasitic dependence on experimental fission reactors to the opportunity to use custom-built pulsed spallation sources, did indeed lead to strained relations between American and European neutron scientists in the mid-1990s, when the anticipated so called neutron gap sharpened competition.

The changes in the use of particle accelerators and other instruments have been studied in many different contexts and from many different angles. Best known is perhaps Peter Galison's analysis of how twentieth-century physics was transformed from individual effort to collective projects involving instrumentation makers, theorists, and experimentalists who coordinated machines, evidence, and arguments (Galison 1997). It is no surprise that the concept of trading zones became important as a way to frame the dynamics.

In this context, however, a more recently described transformation is even more relevant, namely how accelerator-based science has shifted focus from particle physics to materials science to biological applications. This change matched one in how technical knowledge claims were implicated in modes of authority, access, and control, together defining the epistemic-political order (Westfall 2008; Doing 2009). In essence, instruments producing subatomic particles were less and less used to gather data about the particles themselves and more and more used to produce particles that were used to gather data about other things such as materials or proteins. The primary research object was no longer the particles themselves, but the different materials and things they were directed at; a change brought about in part by the necessary search for user support when mobilizing scientific backing for the funding of large and expensive research facilities.

The consequences are that large-scale research facilities usually rely on arguments that reveal their primary function to be supplying imagined or real 'users' with instruments to access data and generate knowledge (Davenport et al. 2003). Many of the arguments in favour of building the ESS are indeed based on the potential applications of its findings, and the ESS and similar international facilities can be understood as examples of hybrid...