Two years ago in May, Science Times reported on the development of the world's highest gain high power laser amplifier. It was dubbed Extreme Light Infrastructure or ELI and costs a staggering amount of €850-million. The whole world had high hopes for the said project. According to the journal Nature, ELI is designed as a system of powerful lasers and particle beams that would allow researchers to do frontier research in fundamental physics, astrophysics, materials science, biomedicine, and even archaeology. As mentioned in our initial report, it may even pave the path to new modalities in radiotherapy that can be used to treat cancer. The great news is, it is about to open its doors to researchers all over the world but unfortunately, they have hit some bumps.
The lasers are hosted by three former communists countries in the EU, namely Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic. But according to the article from Nature, disputes between the three countries are arising. One reason is Romania's delayed project completion. The Romanian laser laboratory was designed to push the boundaries of nuclear physics but unfortunately, it is locked in a legal tussle that is preventing the completion of its gamma source. It is high-intensity gamma rays beam that would allow the study of nuclear structure at unprecedented resolution.
Because of the importance of the project, there had been several attempts by the European Commission to cool tensions and keep the project on track in Romania, but so far all these had failed and this has raised doubts about the country's ability to deliver and its continued involvement in the project.
Several nations involved in ELI's development and those that are hoping to eventually join ELI as well have shown their concerns and had sent letters to convey this.
In fact the dispute may lead to the possibility of Romania being shut out from ELI's next crucial phase - the creation of the legal entity, an international CERN-like body that will oversee all three sites, and have responsibility for raising the €75 million a year needed to run ELI, most of which will come from membership fees paid by ELI-participating countries. The two other host countries wanted to proceed with the creation of the organization without Romania and Italy (which is involved in coordinating ELI's development alongside France, Germany and the United Kingdom0 says that it will step in, to create what will be known as a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC), this year.
"We are strongly convinced about the value of the frontier research that can be done with ELI, and in Italy we have a richly diverse scientific community that would like to exploit it," says Massimo Inguscio, president of the Italian Research Council CNR.
Allen Weeks, ELI's director-general, says, "We believe our Romanian colleagues will be able to resolve the issues and they will have the possibility to join the ERIC at that time." "We hope that Romania will be able to catch up quickly and complete its facility in full, as it was originally proposed," says Michael Prouza, head of the Czech laboratory.
