Bilbao recently took a major step forward in its bid to provide a home for the European Spallation Neutron Source (ESS), one of the world's major forthcoming scientific facilities, when the Basque candidature presented its arguments to the Strategic Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). Top-level sources at the ESS-Bilbao consortium said the report included exhaustive information on the candidature, covering technological issues, costs, the project's financing and management model, plus its legal structure, even dealing with questions concerning the scientific and technological milieu the ESS would be part of if it came to the region.

At an investment of more than one thousand million euros, the project is a source of low-energy neutrons that penetrate materials to provide precise information about their atomic structure. Besides requiring between 400 and 500 permanent research workers, the ESS would facilitate an "annual transfer" of nearly 4,000 researchers more, a development that would clearly have a great impact on the creation and consolidation of a "research climate" in the Basque Country.

A spallation neutron source can be used by researchers from a broad range of disciplines, including molecular biology, the physics of materials and medicine, and has many applications in industry in general, particularly in pharmaceutics and the automotive, aerospace and electronics industries.

Although two other candidates, one from Sweden and the other from Hungary, are vying with ESS-Bilbao for the source, the Bilbao and Hungarian candidates announced on 24 January an agreement to cooperate on the design of the future ESS, under a single scientific director, Professor Ferenc Mezei, a pioneer in a number of developments in neutron-related techniques.

The report will be studied by a specially created group of experts at ESFRI led by Professor Zinsli, Switzerland's Secretary of State for Education and Research.