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Pohang Accelerator Labo-ratory (PAL) announced that the 4th generation light source, X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) is under the construction. PAL opened the beamtime for users from Sep. 1995 and closed the beamtime at the end of Dec. 2010 for upgrading project called PLS-II. During the user service periods, 23,234 scientists participated and executed 7,127 research tasks, and published more than 2,757 papers. It is also selected as the 10th greatest achievement of Korea’s modern technology in 20th Century. PAL received 100 billion KRW for three years from 2009 to 2011 in order to improve its perfor-mance. Many scientists visit PAL again to use the brand new PLS-II in 2012. On the basis of the endeavoring efforts to maintain and improve PAL for 20 years, PAL-XFEL is already under the construction with financial support from the government from 2011 and is expected to be finished in 2014.
Pohang Light Source (PLS) has been utilized in research fields of natural science, applied science, and engineering. Materials can be shown in a scale of molecules with synchrotron radiation.
By arranging several magnetic with different electronic poles along the way which electron beam passes, the fourth generation, PAL-XFEL can produce 10 billion brighter light compared to PLS-II. The synchrotron light from the PAL-XFEL let we watch the movement of atoms and molecules faster than lightening as we can watch the inside of body through X-ray. In addition, it is possible to observe very fast nature phenomenon such as analysis of protein structure necessary in development of new medicine, photosynthesis, and reaction research in various environments. Professor Moo Hyun Cho, the director of PAL mentioned “25 years ago, POSCO invested 86,500 million KRW on the accelerator and now the PLS-II, leading Korea’s R&D to the top class was constructed. It has been 25 years passed from that point. PAL obtained financial support for building the 4th generation, PAL-XFEL which is expected to cost 400 billion KRW from government and it resulted to develop Pohang as the world’s science city.”
