Russia’s latest “megascience” project, the Siberian Circular Photon Source (SKIF) in the new science city of Koltsovo near Novosibirsk, is in the process of drafting a cooperation agreement with China’s High Energy Photon Source, itself a fourth-generation synchrotron. Once fully operational next year, SKIF will be “among the world’s five most advanced facilities in its class,” according to Gleb Bourenkov of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. SKIF is also the gateway to an even more ambitious project: a new synchrotron combined with an X-ray free-electron laser at the same site, scheduled to open in the 2030s.
SKIF will be open to cooperation with all friendly countries, particularly BRICS members. Brazilian researchers at the Sirius synchrotron have already expressed interest in working on the project. Chinese researchers, meanwhile, are finding it difficult to secure sufficient “beam time” for some of their experiments on China’s own synchrotron, making access to SKIF an appealing option.
