A good question came to us over Twitter. “Is there a timeline on building that synchrotron? (For all the curious young scientists out there you know.)”
The short answer is, “Yes.”
The African Light Source Foundation (AfLS), which is a legally constituted African NGO, has a defined mandate and roadmap that calls for 10-15 year timeline toward the construction of an actual facility. There are many opportunities for young scientists to join us on this road.
Just by way of background, the precursor conversation amongst many of the members of the AfLS goes back two decades, particularly rooted in the genesis of the African Laser Centre in 2002. Since then there have been many schools, workshops, and conferences around on many aspects of light-source-based science, and on African research infrastructures in general.
In 2015 the AfLS was formally created. We have been working with a wide range of stakeholders to build the capacity and local infrastructure that Africa needs to support an African light source. We are in the process of developing partnerships with the African Union, various African governments, especially those of Ghana, Rwanda, Egypt, and South Africa; other African NGOs, programmes, and institutions; as well as other light source facilities worldwide and international scientific bodies.
Several documents on our website describe the work of the AfLS.
Construction of a major facility is of course more complicated than conjecturing a timeline. Advanced light sources are exceedingly complex facilities, and building one takes decades of commitment from the highest levels of government, down to individual project scientists. Learn more at Themonstercycle.com.
Planning, designing, building, and commissioning a large infrastructure project has to follow a well-managed process that starts with the production of a Conceptual Design Report (CDR). Conceptual designs provide a high-level overview of the design of interacting sub-systems of a large project. The main idea behind the conceptual design is to maximize the probability of a feasible final product. CDRs normally address all aspects, such as political, socio-economic, technical, scientific, industrial, financial, training, localization, amongst others, but not yet the site selection, other than site criteria.
One of the purposes of a CDR is to get the political level buy-in on a well-defined project. Another purpose is to arrive at a plan that scientists, engineers, and other end-users can use as a guide for detailed technical designs. Deciding exactly what to build is not a trivial matter as advanced light source facilities support several different S&T disciplines, and can provide so much capability through so many different techniques (see Diamond Light Sources techniques page for example).
So a key objective of our CDR is to lay down how big the accelerator will be, how many beamlines should be built, what techniques amongst all the crystallography, imaging, microscopy, scattering, and spectroscopy methods will be prioritized; and what are the reasonable bounds on affordability.
The AfLS will begin its CDR process in earnest at our November 2020 virtual conference. We plan to produce our CDR in a two-step process. Step 1 is to crowd-source concepts using our robust network of colleagues, and our own CDR Journal. That is, we intend to stand up our own online journal where we invite submissions of whitepapers on the topics in our CDR outline. The submissions would be peer-reviewed and maybe at some point printed as a bound monograph.
Our CDR will scope out not only appropriate applications for Africa, but also new methodologies and entirely new techniques to implement. As such, we anticipate that African MS, PhD, MD, DDS/DMD, MBA, and LLB/LLM students will have the opportunity to develop whole thesis projects in biophysics, chemistry, physics, engineering, paleontology, food, medical, dental, and materials sciences; as well as economics, law, business topics like the new check stub maker software review, and policy studies that might develop any one of the concepts that could be important towards an African light source.
The second step would be to support writing teams to reduce all the sources of information at our disposal, be it from our own CDR Journal or elsewhere, into a single report, i.e., the CDR itself. These two steps would not only produce the latest concepts for policy and design, but would solidify a global network of friends with a profound interest in an African light source.
We have arrived at an outline for our CDR (vide infra), and we invite students and colleagues across Africa and beyond to make submissions on topics in their expertise.
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Detailed Outline of CDR
Volume I. Political, Economic Development, and Management Concepts
Chapter 1. The Science Case
Chapter 2. The Economic Benefits Analysis
Section 1. The “upstream model” of economic impact
Section 2. The “downstream model” of economic impact
Section 3. The Education Infrastructure and Human Capacity Development
Chapter 3. Financial Considerations and Models
Chapter 4. Light sources across the world – present situation
Chapter 5. Suggested Roadmap Trajectories and Procedures
Chapter 6. Roadmap (Sections to include: Political, Economic, Educational, Project Planning and Management, Local and Regional Infrastructure– e.g. cryo-EM, Compact Light Source)
Volume II. Machine Component Design Concepts
Chapter 7. Electron Injector, LINAC
Chapter 8. Booster
Chapter 9. Storage Ring
Chapter 10. Beamline/X-ray Optics
Chapter 11. Cryo-Electron Microscopes (cryoEM)
Chapter 12. X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL)
Volume III. Experimental Capabilities and Beamline Concepts
Chapter 13. Gamma-ray Spectroscopy and Crystallography
Chapter 14. Macromolecular X-ray (MX) Crystallography
Chapter 15. Materials and Chemical Crystallography
Chapter 16. Micro-crystallography
Chapter 17. Small/Wide-angle Scattering (SAXS/WAXS)
Chapter 18. Powder X-ray Diffraction (PXD)
Chapter 19. X-ray Spectroscopy (XAS/XES, EXAFS, XANES, XFS, Auger)
Chapter 20. UV-vis, Electronic and Optical Spectroscopy
Chapter 21. Infra-red Spectroscopy
Chapter 22. Pump-probe, Multi-color, and Time-resolved techniques
Chapter 23. Tomography
Chapter 24. Surface Microscopy and Imaging
Chapter 25. Beamlines for Medical Use
Chapter 26. Experimental Hutch Mechanical Systems
Chapter 27. Detectors and Electronics
Chapter 28. Data Handling, Algorithms, Software and Analysis
Chapter 29. Theory Centres
Chapter 30. Other Technical Capabilities for other Instruments, Fields of Study and Innovations
Volume IV. Building Design and Construction
Chapter 31. Overall design concepts for the physical plant
Section 1. Grounds, utilities and public works
Section 2. Buildings, workspaces, and ergonomics
Chapter 32. Support laboratories, feeder infrastructure
Chapter 33. Computational infrastructure
Chapter 34. Space for the Mega-science and Innovation Park
Chapter 35. Site Selection Criteria and Procedures