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French scientists are challenging a government decision not to earmark any funds to build a new FF1.4 billion (US$244 million), 2.15-GeV synchrotron radiation facility, Soleil, in the 1999 science budget.

Many researchers had hoped that construction would be given the go-ahead at an interministerial committee meeting in January. But Claude Allègre, the minister of research, has described the facility in a parliamentary debate as costly and only of interest to “about 40 researchers”. Referring to foreign access to the facility, Allègre said that building the machine would be a financial subsidy “to British research”.

The minister also claimed that much of the impetus for construction originated in rivalry between the regions seeking to host Soleil. Finally, Allègre claimed that French scientists would not suffer because they could continue to use other existing third-generation synchrotron sources (see Nature 395, 831; 1998),

Several directors of synchrotron facilities, however, have signed a joint letter saying that it is impossible for them to accommodate “a scientific community as large and diversified as the French”. Signatories of the letter include Nils Märtensson of MAX-lab at Lund in Sweden, Herbert Moser of ANKA at Karlsruhe in Germany and Jochen Schneider of HASYLAB in Hamburg.

The LURE source at Orsay: already heavily used. Credit: CNRS/B. CHAUVEAU

Yves Petroff, director-general of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility at Grenoble, says he does not know “where Allègre got his figures from, but they are so ridiculous it is not even worth replying”. The figure of 40 refers not to the number of researchers but to the number of beam lines that Soleil will offer, says Petroff, adding that more than 2,000 researchers use the second-generation light source LURE at Orsay.

The candidate host regions have asked for the decision on whether to build Soleil to be independent of that of where to site it. Arguing that “the decision to construct Soleil is a top priority”, they have also agreed that the host region will contribute to funding the light source and the planned beam lines during the initial programme, while the other regions will pay to build additional beam lines specific to the activities of their researchers. Allègre has been aware of this agreement for several months, as a letter signed by the six main scientific backers of the project was sent to him in July. No reply has yet been received.

François Wuilleumier, chair of the committee ‘Soleil for the Ile-de-France’, points out that this arrangement is already working for two beam lines at LURE. Similar agreements exist with Spain and Switzerland.

Several researchers at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) say that Allègre's desire to encourage interdisciplinary research and create a centre for genome research (Génopole) is inconsistent with his refusal to build a machine that is essential for the future of genomic research.

Without Soleil, say Christian Le Brun and Jean-Pierre Couture, directors of research at the CNRS, “France will become an underdeveloped country” at a time when the major European nations are equipping themselves, as in the United Kingdom, or have already done so, as in Germany.