The Fourteenth Meeting 
of the International Collaboration on
Advanced Neutron Sources
June 14-19, 1998 Starved Rock Lodge Utica, Illinois


MEETING SUMMARY

ICANS XIV, the fourteenth meeting of the International Collaboration on Advanced Neutron Sources, took place at Starved Rock Lodge, Utica, Illinois, June 14–19, 1998.  Argonne’s Intense Pulsed Neutron Source division served as host.  The U.S. Department of Energy, The University of Chicago Board of Governors, Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Neutron Scattering Society of America sponsored the meeting.  Jack Carpenter was conference chair and organizer, with Erik Iverson assisting, while Laura Miller, IPNS executive secretary, served as conference secretary.  Beverly Marzec, Cathy Riblon, Carolyn Tobin, Ira Bresof, and Merle Faber, all of IPNS, ably and good-naturedly saw to all the needs of the attendees.  One hundred twenty-seven participants registered for the meeting, representing 27 institutions and ten countries. 

Starved Rock State Park was named for a grisly battle between American Indian tribes in the mid-18th century.  We occupied the entire Lodge, a 1920s complex standing on a bluff above the Illinois River.  Dann Sarro and Joanne Thomas of Argonne’s Information and Publishing division created the conference logo, in which the ICANS “I” represents a picturesque waterfall in the park.  Participants enjoyed nature walks in the nearby woods and visits to the small towns in the bucolic surrounding area. 

The meeting began with a reception on Sunday evening.  Monday’s plenary sessions included status reports on the four operating spallation neutron sources, IPNS, ISIS, KENS, and the Lujan Center; on the INR source under construction at Troitsk; on the IBR-2 pulsed reactor at Dubna; and on proposals for five new installations.  We also heard reports on spin-off activities: the ASTE tests (liquid mercury target tests at the AGS accelerator at Brookhaven), the ACoM activities (developments aimed to provide cold moderators suitable for high-power pulsed sources), and the International Workshop on Cold Moderators for Pulsed Neutron Sources, held in September 1997 at Argonne.  Jose Alonso and Bob Macek delivered enlightening invited talks overviewing linear accelerators and rings for spallation neutron sources.  The rest of the meeting was devoted to targets and moderators and to instrumentation in a normal rotation of ICANS topics.  There were altogether 84 oral reports and 23 poster presentations. 

On Tuesday and on Wednesday morning, we divided into separate series of sessions on Instrumentation and on Targets and Moderators.  In the first, we had reports and discussions on instrumentation and techniques, on computer software, on instrument suites, and on new instruments and equipment.  In the second series were sessions on liquid target systems, on solid target systems, on neutron production and target physics, on moderator physics and performance, and on target and moderator neutronics.  The Tuesday evening meetings went on until 10:00, making for a 14-hour working day.  That everyone willingly endured the long hours is a credit to the dedication of the attendees. 

On Wednesday afternoon, we boarded buses for the 1-hour trip to Argonne, where attendees toured IPNS and the Advanced Photon Source.  Returning to Starved Rock, we enjoyed boat rides on the Illinois River and then a barbecue banquet dinner at the Lodge. 

All day Thursday and Friday morning, the attendees, in small working groups, discussed next-generation powder diffractometers, critical heat flux limitations on solid targets, monte carlo instrument simulation, prospects for high- and low-energy spectroscopy, small angle scattering and reflectometry, and the roles of solid and liquid targets in high-power pulsed spallation sources.  Representatives of the laboratories participating in ICANS met Thursday evening to discuss the outcome of ICANS XIV and to decide whether, where, and when the next meeting would take place.  They agreed to meet again in about 2 years in Japan.  After the lunch break on Friday, the working group chairs presented the findings of their groups to the participants in a final plenary session, and the meeting adjourned with good feelings of accomplishment. 

A great deal has been achieved since the last ICANS meeting in 1995 at PSI in Switzerland, and much more is in progress.  At this writing, the good news is that the Spallation Neutron Source project, SNS, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, has received the official go-ahead, designated as a funded seven-year-long construction project with $130 million for the 1999 fiscal year (began October 1, 1998).  The schedule calls for completion at the end of FY 2005.  We hail this event and the wonderful progress made worldwide in the development of pulsed sources and accelerator-based neutron facilities. 

We have reproduced the papers and reports essentially as they came to us, with only minor format changes.  Carolyn Tobin and Beverly Marzec in the IPNS offices carried out the organization and collation of papers.  Argonne’s Information and Publishing Division produced these Proceedings, and ICANS XIV has a web site accessible through the IPNS home page at http://www.pns.anl.gov/.

I thank our sponsors, all those who worked so hard as hosts to our meeting and in preparation of the Proceedings, and the authors and participants whose cooperation with our manuscript requirements made the final task easier. 

The ICANS XIV Proceedings are in print production at this time and should be available to the Conference Attendees by late January 1999. 

J. M. Carpenter 
November 1998