Getting Beamtime During the Shutdown
The NRU reactor was shutdown for maintenance on May 14, 2009. See AECL's NRU status reports for details. Proposals for beam time at the Canadian Neutron Beam Centre are still encouraged, because we aim to be running approved user projects (especially those for Canadian academics) immediately on restart of the NRU reactor. Meanwhile, parallel applications to foreign facilities are also encouraged. Examples of foreign neutron laboratories include: SNS, HFIR, NIST, LANSCE, OPAL, ISIS and BENSC. A full list is available here.
Oak Ridge National Lab, USA (SNS and HFIR)
Proposals for beam time at Oak Ridge National Laboratory's High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) and Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) will be accepted via the web-based proposal system until noon eastern time, Wednesday, September 1, 2010. This call is for experiments to run from December 2010 to May 2011.
Specific information about this call and about each of the instruments available during this experimental period is included on the ORNL Neutron Sciences web site at http://neutrons.ornl.gov/users/user_news.shtml
Bragg Institute, Australia (OPAL)
The next proposal round at OPAL is open now, with a closing date of 24 October 2010. Proposals may be submitted online. OPAL is interested in hosting users to assist CINS researchers in the temporary shutdown, even if the application is just in case NRU is shut down longer than presently anticipated.
OPAL has 7 neutron instruments operating:
ECHIDNA - high-resolution powder diffraction - contact: Max
Avdeev or James Hester
WOMBAT - high-intensity powder diffraction - contact: Andrew
Studer or Vanessa Peterson
KOALA - single-crystal Laue diffractometer - contact: Alison
Edwards or Ross Piltz
KOWARI - strain scanner - contact: Oliver
Kirstein or Vladimir Luzin
PLATYPUS - neutron reflectometer - contact: Michael
James or Andrew Nelson
QUOKKA - small-angle neutron scattering - contact: Elliot
Gilbert, Bill Hamilton or Katy Wood
TAIPAN - thermal 3-axis spectrometer - contact: Mohana
Yethiraj or Sergei Danilkin
OPAL presently has some spare capacity on ECHIDNA, KOALA and KOWARI. See OPAL's research staff page for contact info. OPAL also has bio- and chemical-deuteration facilities, X-ray reflectometry and SAXS, which are available in conjunction with neutron experiments.
