Institut Laue–Langevin

The Institut Laue -Langevin (ILL ) in Grenoble is an international research center, which operates the most powerful neutron source in the world with its high-flux reactor ( HFR). With radiant tubes and neutron guides the neutrons are conducted at more than thirty experimental stations. Every year from about 1,500 visiting researchers more than 800 experiments, especially in the field of neutron scattering performed.

The ILL is a few kilometers from Grenoble train station on a former artillery training ground on the gravel peninsula before the confluence of the Drac into the Isère. It borders almost immediately to the French Centre d' études nucléaires de Grenoble. On the grounds of the ILL are now also a branch of the EMBL and the ESRF have settled.

History

Only a few years after the signing of the Elysee Treaty, the ILL was founded in January 1967 by Germany and France. Named were the two physicists Max von Laue ( Germany ) and Paul Langevin (France). 1971, the reactor was first critical; soon after ingestion of the research operation occurred in 1973 in the UK as an equal partner. The operation of the Institute is based on international agreements with a term of ten years, which does not automatically renew; However, the ILL is not an international organization but a private limited company under French law.

The end of 1990 were found cracks in a built-in part of the reactor, on account of which the operation had to be suspended; repair by replacement of the entire pressure vessel was decided only after long negotiations in the framework of the due contract extension. On that occasion put the UK through a reduction of its contribution by 50%. In the following years, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Russia and a consortium of Austria and the Czech Republic as core partners were ( not parties ) at. Russia makes a contribution by providing fissile material.

Directors of the ILL have included Heinz Maier- Leibnitz ( 1967-72 ) and Rudolf Mössbauer ( 1972-77 ).