Every time I leave the nearby city of Grenoble, to return to
Choranche, I drive alongside a vast scientific research zone,
snuggled in the northern tip of the big triangle located between
the two great waterways known as the Snake and the Dragon:
that's to say, the Isère and the Drac. (The latter looks and
behaves like a normal stream, but it's actually an Alpine
torrent.) This zone houses two extraordinary research tools,
whose construction was financed by a consortium of nations: —
The ILL [Institut Laue-Langevin] is a nuclear reactor that
produces neutrons. This research reactor produces the most
intense neutron flux in the world. Its thermal power is over 58
megawatts. By comparison, Australia's recently-inaugurated Opal
reactor, which is also designed to produce neutrons for
research, has a power output of only 20 megawatts. Grenoble's
ILL reactor is funded by France, Germany, the UK, Spain,
Switzerland, Austria, Russia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden,
Hungary, Belgium and Poland. — The ESRF [European