HBS-Workshop Welcomes Leading International Experts

Jülich, 29.09.2025

This year's High Brilliance Neutron Source (HBS) workshop took place in Siegburg from 18-19 September, where leading experts from the scientific community exchanged ideas with industry representatives on the latest developments in the field of high-current accelerator neutron sources (HiCANS) in Europe.

The director of Forschungszentrum Jülich's Division I, Prof. Kobus Kuipers, welcomed the 59 participants on the occasion of the HBS-I project being included on the shortlist of the new federal funding programme for large-scale research infrastructures in Germany. In addition, the HiCANS community has also gained momentum internationally: at the beginning of 2026, the HiCANS platform is scheduled to be set up at ESS Bilbao with the relocation of the target moderator station from Jülich to Spain, alongside Spanish plans for their own CANS source called ARGITU; French colleagues are in the final stages of preparing the technical design report for the French CANS source ICONE, in two expansion phases, each with approximately 5 instruments.

The instrument concepts at ICONE show how the instrument concepts at HBS-I demonstrate an expected performance comparable to instruments at national sources such as the decommissioned Orphée reactor. As an example, in the case of neutron reflectivity, in-situ measurements with time resolutions of about 10 minutes are realistic at HiCANS sources.