The love/hate relationship between "les Rostbifs" and "the Frogs" is not just being tested by France’s refusal to import British beef and Britain’s counter claim that the French feed their livestock on some pretty unmentionable substances. "No", or "non", the x-ray scientists are getting pretty upset with their governments over an agreement to coalesce plans for two new national synchrotrons and build just one machine in Britain.

Ten to fifteen years ago both countries had synchrotrons to be proud of, LURE at Orsay outside Paris, producing leading work in atomic physics and the SRS at Daresbury, near Warrington in the UK, having great successes, for example in macromolecular crystallography. Everyone realised for some time that the days were numbered for these so-called "second generation machines" which were originally designed with the bending magnets as the radiation sources rather than just mechanisms for steering the electron or positron beam around in a closed path. Even when "insertion devices" were added into the straight sections no number of upgrades could make them compete in brightness or brilliance (the latter takes account not only of the natural collimation of the beam but also the very small source size from which it is emitted) with "third generation machines" such as ESRF in Grenoble (on stream 5 years ago) and its younger relatives: APS at Argonne, USA and SPRING-8 at Himeji, Japan. On the other hand the demand in the three continents cannot be satisfied by these super machines alone: only the most suitable and most highly rated experiments will win beamtime on them. Other national facilities are needed. The Americans have NSLS at Brookhaven, the Germans have HASYLAB in Hamburg, the Japanese have the Photon Factory, and numerous countries with gross national products a fraction of these have there own rings.

The French and the British have been developing their plans for SOLEIL and DIAMOND, respectively for many years in the expectation that their governments would eventually see sense and each hand over the few hundred million dollars to construct these toys, on the grounds that we shall deliver everything from the structure of the HIV virus to the mechanism of high temperature superconductivity, with the meaning of life thrown in somewhere along the route.

In Britain it did begin to look as though the battle was won when the Wellcome Foundation (a charitable trust originally created by the Drug Company of the same name) put up over half the construction cost, coupled with a not unreasonable proviso that a large number of beamlines must be dedicated to large molecule crystallography. About 12 months of "horse trading" seemed to be converging on a specification for the machine (2.5-3.2 GeV), if not for its location. After discovering that Wellcome’s headquarters, near Cambridge, were geologically unsuitable (built on an old quarry) a number of sites other than Daresbury were promoted including universities in England (mine included) and Scotland. Then leaks from "usually reliable sources" revealed that the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, home of the ISIS spallation neutron source, was the favourite of the Government and the Research Councils. This proposal doubtless arose from (i) a scientific appreciation of the synergy between x-ray and neutron studies, the best example of which is the juxtaposition of the ESRF and ILL in Grenoble, and (ii) an accountant’s estimate that it would save loads of money. I bet I know which argument the science minister found more persuasive.

Things started to go wrong this summer. Firstly the UK science minister, Lord Sainsbury, publicly worried about the political wisdom of removing another government facility from the North (Daresbury is near Manchester and Liverpool), thus giving Daresbury staff a glimmer of hope that their jobs might be preserved and their northern university customers good cause to renew their protests. That was all before the 1999 summer holidays when governments go into limbo and surprisingly everyone else seems to get along fine. This year, however, in August, French scientists were devastated to learn that their government had abandoned their own SOLEIL synchrotron project and "bought into" the "New UK synchrotron" (definitely no longer to be called DIAMOND in case anyone thought that those two "Ds" had anything to do with Daresbury). To say that French scientists are upset would be like saying that Napoleon was disappointed at Waterloo: they are up in arms with their Science Minister. Letters to the press, non co-operation and all those other feeble tactics employed by scientists and academics who have too much of a conscience to cause any real trouble to anyone: the French government is not about to fall on this issue.

It is truly difficult to see how this compromise could work to anyone’s advantage, except those ministers whose job it is to draw the purse strings tighter and tighter. And what about the location? The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, south of Oxford requires a journey through Heathrow, where the first hour is spent walking to the baggage claim area and the second hour (or so it seems) watching other peoples’ baggage arrive. The Rutherford Lab was built next door to Harwell which was originally meant to be inaccessible; it was literally not on the map - this was supposed to confuse "the enemy"- because neutrons always have had other uses than scientific research. It still seems to be in the middle of nowhere. By contrast Daresbury is a mere 20 minutes by taxi from Manchester airport which is far quicker to escape from than Heathrow. Unlike Orsay, neither site is on a rapid transit train line to whisk one to civilisation when the beam goes down or the autopilot can safely be set. Entertainment, Daresbury style, consists of one pub within walking distance and...well apart from watching English teams lose at football/cricket/rugby etc. on the TV, that’s it.

Don’t expect to read in the next issue of the IRPS Newsletter that all has been resolved. This saga will run for some time and, I predict, run true to everyone’s worst caricatures of politicians. There could be a parliamentary Select Committee enquiry to establish how we got to where we are, and progress forward (lack thereof) will leave all synchrotron users frustrated and the Daresbury staff demoralised. Of course there is a simple solution if only both governments had the sense to see it. Compromise half way. Warwick and Kenilworth are full of French restaurants and Warwick University is one of the best holiday centres in the country with theatres and concert halls for the scientists who take themselves seriously and cheap bars and cinemas for the research students who know what really matters. Of course I would be the obvious person to direct the whole venture - for a suitably large pay rise and freedom from the tyranny of marking endless undergraduate lab reports. If this is not acceptable I have the ultimate solution. Let’s build it half way between France and England, in the middle of the channel. After all, if the Japanese can build a floating airport I see no real difficulty in making a floating synchrotron ring: they all look just like giant lifebelts anyway. With a half way stop for trains in the channel tunnel it could recover costs as a tourist attraction for holiday makers who are bored on their channel crossings now that duty free sales within Europe are banned. Maybe I should talk to the Minister, but there is just a chance that he might take me seriously.