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A call to industry to launch a South African synchrotron light source initiative

27th February 2015

By: Creamer Media Reporter

  

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By: Tony Joel

In a recent Letter to the Editor that I sent to Engineering News (Concerns regarding South African portion of Square Kilometre Array) and in a follow-up article elaborating further (We must start preparations to build our own synchrotron light source), I stated my belief that the spending of our tax money on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is most certainly not the best use of our limited resources.

The SKA is just a ‘quasar detector’, that is, little more than a giant, hugely expensive toy built to satisfy the very narrow, esoteric, hobbyist interests of a mere handful of astronomers and astrophysicists. As such, it will provide in its research outputs lamentably little, if anything at all, of benefit to the South African taxpayer. Knowledge of the distant reaches of deep space and of Man’s place in the universe is not going to help find, for example, cures for dread diseases afflicting South Africans.

I went on to state that a much better use of government spending for scientific research and development, and in particular that earmarked for the SKA, is to use it toward the establishment of a state-of-the-art, world-class, competitive synchrotron light source in South Africa. Such a facility will be able to address – simultaneously – a wide range of areas in many scientific disciplines of material value to South Africans, and, indeed, other Africans, including those cures I mentioned earlier. Call it SALS, the South African Light Source. I then urged the Department of Science and Technology to launch a feasibility study into the matter of a SALS, post-haste. For extensive information on synchrotron light sources, see www.lightsources.org.

At the same time, I approached most of the universities in the country to consider initiating a low-cost, practically orientated, ‘hands-on’ academic programme to build up, in preparation, a cohort of young physics and engineering postgraduates who would form the core of a skilled, competent body of technical personnel to eventually design, build and operate SALS.

Such a preparatory programme would, as I have described it to the universities, be centred on an experimental facility that I refer to as ERDI, the Electron Radiation Development Installation, which would be started and then built up gradually, organically, over several years, in stages, by successive generations of students. ERDI would be, ideally, a joint undertaking by the Electrical Engineering and Physics departments of a university or of several universities, and would be a source of master’s degree projects over the years. Each constituent project would take no more than two years to complete. Spreading the whole programme out over several years would help to spread out the cost. I have elaborated in some detail on the idea of ERDI in a proposal document that I have titled ‘Proposal for a university-based electron accelerator R&D programme’.

I draw inspiration for this proposal from the experience of the Brazilians, who, over many years, built up their first, rather basic, synchrotron from scratch, virtually by hand, and in the process established a highly competent group of physicists and engineers who are now in a position to embark on the design and construction of their second machine, Sirius, a truly world-class, state-of-the-art facility. I would like to see us emulate their approach.

From those few universities that have responded to this idea of an ERDI, one of the main objections raised is about the financing of such a programme. Government is unlikely to provide funding, as it is currently spending significant amounts on sponsoring South African researchers to make use of synchrotron facilities overseas. Indeed, in this way, it is, and has been for years, building up a critical mass of potential future indigenous users of a local light source.

Another reason government is not likely to be supportive of ERDI (or, for that matter, of a SALS feasibility study) is that it may seem to some that starting now to prepare for the engineering of an own large SALS facility is premature, that is, still way too early. I, of course, disagree. The planning and preparation for a synchrotron light source, including the building up, training and preparation of the engineering human resources, takes many years and should start forthwith and run in parallel with the building up of the scientific user base.

So, I call on industry, that is, the biotechnology companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the petrochemical companies, the mining houses and other potential beneficiaries of the research outputs of a SALS, to come together in a consortium to initiate, sponsor and own the proposed ERDI programme at one or more of our universities. A point will, as a result and in due course, be reached when a sufficiently viable body of builders will exist to undertake the design and construction of SALS, and of operators to run and maintain it.

Such a full-scale light source facility, when eventually built, should, like ERDI, be owned largely by industry. In addition, as such, it should be operated for remuneration. It could form the nucleus of a technopark where the offices and laboratories of numerous high-tech companies could be stationed. Some of these companies could have shares in the facility and own or hire beamlines at the facility for their own proprietary research. An example of industry involvement and ownership is the Diamond synchrotron light source in England (www.diamond.ac.uk), which has as a major shareholder the Wellcome Trust, a subsidiary of a well-known biotech and pharmaceuticals company.

I look forward to observing the launch of an ERDI programme which will lead eventually, but timeously, to the establishment of SALS, a very important and very useful piece of large-scale scientific infrastructure, here in South Africa, not only for our benefit, but for the benefit of the whole African continent.

 

Joel is a University of the Witwatersrand electrical engineering alumnus recently retired after a career in electrical and electronic engineering and physics spanning some 43 years at the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation - ajoel9999@gmail.com

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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