Use of neutron facilities is gained by application to the facility a scientist wishes to use.
ISIS - the UK neutron
source located at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford
ISIS at the
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is managed by the CLRC of the UK. The RAL site has been chosen
as the location for the new UK synchrotron
Diamond and other facilities of biological relevance available there include
solid-state NMR. Application
for beam time may be made direct to ISIS using the form supplied on-line. Some
beam time in each round is set aside for direct donation to "hot" scientific
projects, infrequent users, exploratory studies or students. However most UK
researchers making application for instrument access will already be in
possession of "tickets" awarded on a grant from one of the research
councils.
The Institut Laue-Langevin
- located in Grenoble, France
The ILL is situated on a site which also includes the
European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
(ESRF), the EMBL Grenoble
Outstation, and the Institut de Biologie
Structurale of the French CNRS. It thus occupies a position which strongly
promotes the cross-fertilization of ideas and exerimental approaches.
Application for ILL beam time is handled entirely by the Institut.
Ongoing development of
facilities
The diffractometer D19 at the ILL will be upgraded in
the near future to provide a 20-30 times increase in the efficiency of data
aquisition by facilitating simultaneous collection of large fractions of a
diffraction data set through a much-increased detector size and angular range.
This is likely to open up new areas of research in fibre diffraction and
crystallography of small proteins.
A new target station at ISIS is being constructured, greatly increasing the potential for biological research there and.
Plans have also been made to construct a brand-new neutron source, the European Spallation Source. This facility would represent a major investment in neutron science, but has met with strong criticism (see also [2] and [3]), and has been the subject of an editorial in Nature.