OAK RIDGE, TN (AP) The Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is getting a $15 million boost from the Canadian government as part of that country’s effort to improve university collaborations with the lab.

The Canada Foundation for Innovation announced Oct. 17 that the money will go toward design and construction of one of the highly instrumented beam lines at the SNS, a $1.4 billion research facility under construction at Oak Ridge.

The SNS will produce the world’s most intense beams of neutrons to explore the structure and properties of materials.

When the SNS is completed in mid-2006, it will be the most powerful research facility of its kind in the world, providing for basic and applied research in everything from drugs to materials.

Canada’s McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario – one of several academic institutions involved in research planning – will collaborate with ORNL and the University of Tennessee on research instruments for SNS. The Canadian school will oversee one of 24 beam lines planned at the research complex.

Project director Thom Mason, a native of Canada, said the partnership is "an indication of the tremendous scientific potential of the facility that is attracting the attention of the research community worldwide."

Canada and ORNL already have scientific ties. Former ORNL scientist Cliff Shull and Bert Brockhouse of McMaster shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1994.

Various research institutions have committed plans for most of the neutron beam lines at SNS, although some funding is still unsettled.

Several of the research stations will be sponsored by ORNL with funds from the U.S. Department of Energy.

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