Australian Synchrotron to be Reprieved but Will it Remain in Low Gear? (February 16, 2012)

A 4-year $90 million agreement appears to be in the process of being stitched up between the Victorian government, the federal government and a consortium of universities to preclude the Australian Synchrotron from closing shop.

Officially opened in 2007 the $221 million facility was in danger of running out of funding by July this year (current running expenses are about $25 million p/a) which would have required it to inform the Australian Securities & Investments Commission of plans for a September shutdown.

The Australian's Bernard Lane reports: The broad lines of a rescue package have been agreed following a Melbourne meeting last November involving former science minister Kim Carr, Australian Research Council chief Margaret Sheil and others with a stake in the facility. Synchrotron director Keith Nugent said: "There's a lot of discussion about how we're going to pull this together. The response to help preserve and protect the synchrotron has been fantastic."

We can only hope that the protracted ructions of the past will now have been fully overcome.

Matters that still need resolution are the backlog of requests for time on the machine -- insufficient number of beamlines -- as well as upgrading to service a wider range of experiments in order to stay competitive and retain specialist staff. In short additional capital funding is required to bring the Synchrotron to full capacity, at present it is only realizing ~25% of its potential.