North-South divide over Diamond site

A decision on the future of the Pounds 175 million national X-ray source, Diamond, is expected in the next two weeks.

The Department of Trade and Industry is to rule on whether the new synchrotron should be sited alongside its predecessor at Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire or be moved to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

Campaigners and unions believe failure to secure Diamond could lead to the closure of Daresbury, costing the region up to 530 jobs and risking scattering an established expert team. They also warn it would damage science in the Northwest to boost the already "overheated" Southeast.

A delegation from the Institution of Professionals, Managers and Specialists, which represents 200 staff at the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Council's facility, met science minister Lord Sainsbury last week to put their case.

Negotiators said the minister was supportive of their economic arguments but hinted that the scientific case to reject a move to the Rutherford Appleton, home to another national facility for probing the structure of matter - the neutron source ISIS - was far weaker.

Stephen Byers, secretary of state for trade and industry, said on Tuesday: "A great deal of work is going on to evaluate the arguments in terms of the siting of Diamond. We hope to make a decision in the next few weeks."

The staff's "Diamond for Daresbury" campaign has gathered support from more than 70 northwest MPs as well as trade unionists at Rutherford Appleton.

Tony Bell, national officer for the IPMS, said: "If they do locate Diamond in Oxfordshire, we fear Daresbury could close. The final decision rests with Stephen Byers."

Campaigners warned that in addition to the loss of expertise, such a decision would cause long delays in getting the facility running just as the need for "structural genomics" was urgent with the imminent completion of the Human Genome Project.

The Daresbury Synchrotron Radiation Source has been operational since 1980 and is used by up to 2,000 British and foreign scientists each year to analyse the structure of matter at a molecular level in physical and life science research.

Much groundbreaking science has been carried out on the site, including Sir John Walker's work to create the first detailed picture of ATP synthase, the molecular motor that drives every living cell, for which he won the Nobel prize.

Much of the funding for the project is already pledged, including Pounds 110 million from the Wellcome Trust and Pounds 35 million from the French government, which has abandoned plans for its own X-ray source.