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History of our institute
Rebuilding Europe
In 1945, Europe was in ruins. In the aftermath of the war, Europe's leaders set about the enormous challenge of rebuilding Europe, both economically and politically.
On 9 May 1950, Robert Schuman, French Minister for Foreign Affairs, proposed to gather coal and steel resources of former enemy nations in order to make war among them impossible. This declaration marks the beginning of European political integration, and 9 May is celebrated as Europe day.
The Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was signed in Paris on 18 April 1951 and entered into force on 24 July 1952. |
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European Atomic Energy Community
Encouraged by the success of the coal and steel community, there was ambition to integrate other important sectors, notably the nuclear energy industry. In the middle of the 1950s, atomic energy was seen as a key factor in strategic and economic terms. The Treaty establishing Euratom was signed on 25 March 1957 and came into force on 1 January 1958.
Euratom’s mission was to contribute to the formation and development of Europe’s nuclear industries, to help improve the standard of living in the Member States and to further the development of trade with other countries. The Euratom treaty also laid down the initial research and training programme of the Joint Research Centre. It called for "a bureau of standards specialising in nuclear measurements for isotope analysis and absolute measurements of radiation and neutron absorption, equipped with its own experimental reactor."
This led directly to the establishment of the Central Bureau for Nuclear Measurements (CBNM) in Geel, Belgium, now known as the Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM), one of the seven institutes of the Joint Research Centre . |
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Central Bureau for Nuclear Measurements (CBNM), Geel, Belgium
At the end of the 1950s, the nuclear industry was developing at an unprecedented rate and neutron data were urgently needed for reactor design, waste management, reactor safety calculations and dosimetry.
In 1960, the president of the European Commission, Mr. Etienne Hirsch and the Director General of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK/CEN), Mr. Louis de Heem, formally agreed to install CBNM on the grounds of the SCK in Geel, Belgium.
It was originally intended to construct a nuclear reactor at CBNM. However this plan was changed in favour of a linear accelerator, a Van De Graaff accelerator and specialised nuclear materials laboratories. All activities were part of a single goal, namely neutron cross-section measurements needed for the development of thermal and fast fission reactors. |
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Van de Graaff accelerators
The first accelerator built at CBNM was a 3.5 MV Van de Graaff accelerator fabricated by “High-Voltage Engineering Corporation” in the Netherlands. This positive-ion machine became operational in 1962 and was able to produce continuous or pulsed beams of protons, deuterons or alpha particles. The Van de Graaff accelerator was exclusively used in the field of neutron physics. This accelerator was dismantled in 2001.
A second Van de Graaff accelerator with a terminal voltage of 7 MV was installed in 1976. This accelerator is operational today, providing beams of protons, deuterons or alpha particles in either continuous or pulsed operation mode. The accelerator can be operated 24 hours per day and seven days per week.
Presently, the facility is used more and more by external users, either in the frame of bilateral collaboration agreements with their institutions (e.g. CEA, CNRS, INFN, or Euratom collaboration agreements) or supported by Euratom Transnational Access programmes. |
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Geel linear accelerator (GELINA)
First experiments with the original linear accelerator, performed after the inauguration in 1965, were transmission measurements on precious 240 Pu samples made available from Los Alamos National Laboratory. An IBM 1800 computer was acquired in 1968 to reduce the raw data while the final evaluation of the results was performed via a teleprocessing system at CITES, Euratom's Computer Centre in Ispra, Italy.
In the seventies the accelerator was upgraded to 150 MeV and in 1983 a pulse compression magnet was installed, enabling compression of the beam pulse duration to less than 1 ns and increase correspondingly the peak intensity by a factor of 10. In combination with the long flight path tubes of up to 400 m length this allows to carry out neutron time-of-flight measurements with hitherto unprecedented energy resolution.
The accelerator was modernised continuously over the last 10 years, and the new installation was inaugurated in October 2009. |
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Radionuclide metrology
In 1959 the first 15 CBNM staff members were recruited and first experimental work in radionuclide metrology began in the laboratories of the Belgian research centre, Studie Centrum voor Kernenergie / Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires (SCK/CEN). The main objective of the radionuclide metrology group was the accurate measurement of radioactivity and decay properties of radionuclides. The group developed and applied accurate primary standardisation techniques for radioactivity and measured and evaluated nuclear decay schemes and atomic data. The radionuclide metrology group also developed a laboratory 255m underground for ultra-low gamma-ray spectrometry, located in the HADES underground facility of SCK/CEN.
Over the last 50 years, this group has – through continuous research and development – built up a reputation as one of the world's leading laboratories in primary standardisation of radionuclides and SI-traceable radioactivity measurements. |
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From mass spectrometry to isotopic measurements
Starting off with four mass spectrometers purchased from the Belgian Nuclear Centre in 1960, this number soon grew to seven forming the backbone of this unit. The unit provided other institutes with analyses of nuclear fuel, burn-up determinations, isotopic assaying of reference samples, quantitative analyses of gases, including fission gases and high precision isotope-ratio determinations.
By 1969, CBNM had become actively involved in providing scientific and technical support to the Safeguards Directorate of the Commission whose task was, and still is today, to safeguard fissile material in the countries of the Community by virtue of the Euratom Treaty.
Involvement in research on the Avogadro constant in 1981 provided the stepping stone towards membership in EUROMET, EURACHEM, CITAC, CCQM at BIPM and in playing a key role in Metrology in Chemistry in the 1990s. Since 2000, stable isotope work further developed in the environmental and food area using differential isotope ratio mass spectrometry. |
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Reference materials
From its first days, the CBNM carried out the preparation and characterisation of sophisticated materials, needed for the accurate determination of parameters relevant for the nuclear industry. In 1969, the institute started to support the EURISOTOP programme on gases in non-ferrous metals - the first step in the CBNM involvement in non-nuclear reference materials.
With the establishment of the Bureau Communautaire de Référence (BCR) by the European Commission in Brussels in 1974 the CBNM got involved in these activities from the beginning. In 1995, the institute (now named IRMM) took over the full responsibility for the storage and distribution of all BCR CRMs together with the renewal of exhausted reference materials. IRMM's own CRM programme was significantly expanded to clinical and food CRMs and the development of CRMs for genetically modified seeds in the 1990s. In 2003, IRMM became solely responsible for the management of all BCR materials and the development, production and certification of new reference materials in the Commission. |
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Food safety and quality
The Food Safety and Quality unit is the youngest among the scientific units of the IRMM. It was created in 2002 by transferring part of the Food Products unit, originally located at the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection in Ispra, Italy, and merging it with the Analytical Chemistry unit in Geel.
Provision of fit-for-purpose, validated testing methods to food and feed safety testing laboratories is the main objective of the unit. Interlaboratory comparisons are also organised to benchmark the capabilities of official and private food control laboratories across the EU. Taken all together, the activities aim at ensuring the comparability of testing results to provide the basis for the harmonised implementation of EU food and feed safety regulations.
Since its creation the unit has built up facilities and expertise to engage in the rapidly developing area of the "omics" sciences. Genomics, proteomics, metabolomics and metabonomics are used as a basis for the development of methods for the detection of allergens in food and the authentication of foodstuffs to protect the well-being of consumers and give them the opportunity of an informed choice when purchasing foodstuffs. |
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Latest update 2 February, 2011
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