Physics Today; August 2002

Synchrotron Partners Take Steps to Open SESAME

Even as violence escalates in the Middle East, plans for SESAME, a synchrotron light source intended to use science to promote peace in the region, are moving forward.

In May, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) officially took the project under its wing. This move is expected to grease political wheels and make it easier to raise the funds needed to realize SESAME (International Centre for Synchrotron

Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East).

SESAME's host, Jordan, is footing the bill for a building to house the machine, and the project's members will pay the annual operating costs--about $4 million plus salaries. But money to upgrade BESSY I, a decommissioned synchrotron donated by Germany to form the core of SESAME, and to outfit the machine with beamlines is still being sought, largely from nonmembers.

To help decide whether to contribute to SESAME, the European Commission is assessing the project technically, financially, and politically to judge its chances of long-term success. Says Dieter Einfeld, who last fall became SESAME's technical director, "This evaluation is very important. If it's positive, I think the project will go ahead. If it's negative, the project could be dead." The assessment is supposed to be completed in the next month or so.

Assuming a positive report, the EC would next try to scrape together $6-8 million to upgrade the main machine. Also riding on the coattails of the EC report is the hope of a US contribution: "If Europe agrees to build the machine," says William Brinkman, president of the American Physical Society, who is chairing an ad hoc group that is promoting SESAME, "we would go to work at getting our government to consider building the first beamlines." That, he says, might cost $5-10 million. Brinkman and the APS got involved in SESAME earlier this year. In the wake of the terrorist attacks and the mounting unrest in the Middle East, says Brinkman, "we felt it was really important to put a bigger emphasis on connecting to physicists in the Muslim world."

Meanwhile, the design for SESAME has been revised, with the energy scaled up from 1 GeV to 2 GeV. The reason, says Einfeld, is that "the users of the Middle East region are asking for hard x-ray photons--it will go up to 20 keV." Because of modifications to the design, the higher energy does not translate into a higher price, he adds.

And Herman Winick, who came up with the idea for SESAME in the first place, has hit on the idea of scrounging parts from other synchrotron sources. He's starting at home, where next year Stanford University's SPEAR ring will be dismantled in preparation for a major upgrade. "All equipment upgrades generate bone yards," says Winick. "I'm making some progress in convincing people not to cannibalize." The next step is for the SESAME council to send engineers and technicians to pack up the parts.

The people for the job, says Winick, would be some of the roughly 20 young scientists from the Middle East who have been training in Europe to build and operate synchrotrons. "For about $30 000 in expenses, they might get $1 million in equipment. In many cases, the stuff is not so bad. And with SESAME, we have a lot of labor and not as much money. It also has symbolic value when we give to this peace project."

Within the past year, Bharain, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates joined SESAME. The project's other members are Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Oman, the Palestinian Authority, and Turkey. Armenia, the runner-up to host SESAME, has downgraded its participation to observer status so it can focus on a more recent domestic synchrotron initiative, CANDLE (see Physics Today, June 2000, page 51, and June 2001, page 32). With those changes, SESAME now has 13 members. But membership will be revisited now that SESAME is under UNESCO's auspices: For the project to gain legal status, six partners must ratify its new statutes and pay membership dues.