Radiation facility to finish in April

SHANGHAIThe Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) project, a key scientific research and technology development platform in China, will be completed and put into use in late April, researchers said yesterday.

After 10 years of preparation, the SSRF project started construction in December 2004 in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Hi-tech Park at a cost of about 1.2 billion yuan ($176 million).

SSRF will be a facility that provides synchrotron radiation, a term used for X-rays or light produced by electrons circulating in a storage ring at nearly the speed of light. Synchrotron radiation sources, which can be compared to "super-microscopes", reveal invaluable information in numerous fields of research and are being used by a growing number of scientists.