With global warming already being a reality, I believe that safe nuclear plants are a necessary stepping-stone on the way to renewable, carbon-free energy. Uranium dioxide is one of these materials that need to change, and Uranium nitride has shown promising results. In my PhD at the University of Bristol I studied the properties of this material in view of its use as nuclear fuel. I went to several synchrotron sources to do experiments and I thought working in a synchrotron would be great because of the variety of the job, and especially at the ESRF, with the new Extremely Brilliant Source. My post-doctoral position was published the day after I defended my thesis…and the rest is history.
I think the upgrade has made this the best synchrotron in Europe, if not the world. The flux we get on ID11 is insane! The focus of the beam is better than ever, and the experiments are really fast due to the huge amount of photons. On top of that, we have just received a new Eiger detector, which makes it even faster. The commissioning of the beamline is going well, and I have already managed some experiments on the beam heating from this high flux.