European Spallation Source

ESS (full name: European Spallation Source ERIC) is a research facility under construction in Lund (Sweden), with its data management and software centre located outside Copenhagen (Denmark). When completed, ESS will be the world’s most powerful accelerator-based source of neutrons. Scientists will use these particles to study the properties and behaviour of materials - right down to the level of atoms. Funded by 13 European countries, this big-science facility is built with contribution from more than 40 research institutes in Europe, and with knowledge and know-how from many research centres worldwide. ESS attracts people from diverse fields and cultures who share the excitement of building a state-of-the-art facility to enable great science and innovation for a sustainable world. The construction of the facility is ongoing. Follow the progress of the ESS Road to Science on our social media. You can also follow our [live public operations screen](https://pos.ess.eu/) that shows the status of parts of the machine as they become operational. Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom Today, there are several research facilities based on neutron sources in Europe, which raises the question, "So why do we need another neutron facility?" Most existing sources are based on nuclear reactors, an approach that has reached its maximum capability and cannot be developed further. It is time for a new approach to neutron science in Europe. **Neutrons are excellent for probing materials on the molecular level** For everything from motors and medicine, to plastics and proteins, detailed studies are dependent on how many neutrons can be produced by a neutron source. This is a significant limitation for existing sources which are based on nuclear reactors. As a result, scientists and engineers have developed a new generation of neutron sources based on particle accelerators and spallation technology, a much more efficient approach. **Europe today has nearly 6000 researchers using neutrons** The limitations of reactor technology have long been known, and it is the consensus among neutron scientists that increased spallation capacity is a necessary step forward. With an improved source there is also the need for ESS to develop increasingly sophisticated instruments and detectors[.](https://ess.eu/instrument-technologies/detector-systems) Better sources and better instruments means exponentially more data to collect and analyse. That means the scientists doing research at ESS must be positioned to take full advantage of the last decade of exponential growth in data management capacity and computational power. As a Greenfield project, built from the ground up not only physically, but organisationally and philosophically, ESS is positioned as the vanguard of the next century of experimental science and the world's next great Big Science facility.