The SPring-8 Project. Hideo Ohno JAERI-RIKEN SPring-8 Project Team Kamigori, Ako-gun, Hyogo 678-12, Japan

SPring-8 project is a ultrahigh-brilliance X-ray synchrotron radiation facility. The commissioning of the storage ring is going on March 1997 and first experiments using some beamlines are expecting on May 1997. The facility will be available to scientists and engineers of universities, national laboratories and industries not only from Japan but also abroad.

The following ten public beamlines, bio-crystallography, soft X-ray spectroscopy of solid, high energy inelastic scattering, nuclear resonant scattering, extremely dense state, physicochemical analysis, soft X-ray photochemistry, crystal structure analysis, high temperature research and XAFS, are under construction. These represent the first phase of SPring-8's public beamline construction program, which is scheduled for completion by the end of 1997. The next 2nd phase public beamline(10 beamlines) construction program will start on April 1997.

JAERI(Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute) and RIKEN(Research Institute of Physics and Chemistry) are also constructing their own beamlines(3 beamlines each) for researches on structural biology and materials science. 5 contract beamlines are also under construction.