# Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2015/1478 of 19 August 2015 on setting up the European Spallation Source as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (European Spallation Source ERIC) (Text with EEA relevance), Division 2: BACKGROUND

Extent: E+W+S+N.I.

ESS is a new international scientific infrastructure to be built in Lund, with the data management activities in Copenhagen. It will be a multi-disciplinary science facility, serving life sciences, physics, chemistry, and materials science, as well as energy and climate sciences. It underpins the vision behind the recommendations of the OECD Megascience Forum in 1999 for large-scale neutron facilities worldwide.
The construction of the ESS neutron source for materials science is a key element in European efforts to further develop its world-leading large-scale research infrastructures suite. A pan-European effort in 2002 produced a Technical Report presenting a conceptual design and an associated Scientific Case. In 2003, the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), set up by the Research Ministries of the Member States and associated countries, concluded that a 5 MW long-pulse, single target station layout for ESS with nominally 22 ‘public’ instruments was the optimum technical reference design that would meet the needs of the European science community in the second quarter of the century.
By building ESS, a facility with unprecedented source performance utilising the novel long-pulse technology, and operating it according to the practice of scientific excellence and as a part of the European network of sources, Europe will retain the world lead in research activities encompassing the broad areas of science requiring neutron scattering methods.

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Source: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eudn/2015/1478/annex/1/division/2 (the official version)
Page: https://openlegislation.uk/eu-decision-2015-1478/annex-1/division-2
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: legislation.gov.uk, The National Archives.