Barcelona

Mutual benefit: Schwartzenberg (left) and Birulés sign the science agreement. Credit: EPA

Spain has agreed to help build a new synchrotron which is being planned outside Paris, in exchange for French participation in an as-yet unspecified major Spanish research facility.

The Spanish and French science ministers, Anna Birulés and Roger-Gérard Schwartzenberg, reached an agreement in Madrid on 5 February to cooperate on the construction and operation of large research facilities. While Spain helps to build the Soleil synchrotron, it will consider various projects for French participation.

Neither country has disclosed the size of the Spanish contribution to the synchrotron, but a French newspaper has estimated it at FFr170 million (US$24 million) towards a total cost of about $220 million. Schwartzenberg told a press conference that Spanish researchers would join the scientific advisory board of the Soleil synchrotron.

Candidates for the Spanish facility, meanwhile, include a research vessel, a 10-metre optical telescope in the Canary Islands, and another synchrotron.

Spain appointed a committee last month to study the feasibility of building its own synchrotron, and is expected to decide whether or not to go ahead with the project by the summer.

Two years ago, a design study for a synchrotron facility to be housed at the Autonomous University of Barcelona was positively evaluated and its construction recommended by the European Science Foundation (see Nature 405, 604; 2000).

Jérémie Boussand, the science attaché at the French Embassy in Madrid, says that if Spain decides to proceed with the synchrotron, then that will be the project that France will support.

Synchrotron light sources, which enable researchers to closely examine three-dimensional structures, have emerged in recent years as an important tool in materials science, chemistry, condensed-matter physics and structural biology.

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