Grenoble, It Seems, Will Get European Synchrotron Facility

The storm of controversy surrounding the site selection for the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility has tended to obscure the prodigious scientific and technological import of this proposed new x-ray source. The ESRF, a 776-meter-circumference storage ring for 5- or 6-GeV electrons, would be the first synchrotron radiation ring designed explicitly for undulator and wiggler sources of hard-x-ray beams. Most high-energy synchrotron light sources, having begun life as electronpositron storage rings for high-energy physics, are not optimized for synchrotron radiation, and they have little room for inserting undulators and wigglers.