The Taiwan beamlines, co-established by National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC) and JASRI of Japan, have been operating successfully for ten years. To celebrate this occasion, The Tenth Anniversary Ceremony was held on 2010 December 22 at SPring-8, Japan. The ceremony, was hosted by Professor Wen-Chang Chang, Deputy Minister of National Science Council and Chairman of the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, and Professor Shih-Lin Chang, Director of NSRRC. Mr. Tetsuhisa Shirakawa, President of JASRI, Professor Hiromichi Kamitsubo, Special Advisor of RIKEN, and Professor Tetsuya Ishikawa, Director of RIKEN Harima Institute and RIKEN SPring-8 Center, had been invited to deliver speeches at the ceremony. Several distinguished scholars and experts also participated in this event to witness the great historic moment.

NSRRC’s Taiwan Beamlines at SPring-8 have been dedicated to user operation since 2000 December 15, which is just over ten years ago. Previously, NSRRC had formally signed the exclusive memorandum of cooperation on the SPring-8 Taiwan beamline construction with Japan on 1998 December 18 under the auspices of the Asia-Pacific Science and Technology Association (referred to as APCST). The commissioning of the beamlines began in 2000 October and the Dedication Ceremony of the Taiwan Beamlines was then held on 2000 December 15.

Under this memorandum of cooperation for the beamline construction, Taiwan was committed to building two hard X-ray beamlines: (1) Biostructure and material research beamline (BL12B2) and (2) Inelastic X-ray scattering beamline (BL12XU). The light source of the BL12B2 beamline is one of the bending magnets in SPring-8; with this beamline, scientists can conduct experiments in X-ray absorption spectroscopy, high-resolution X-ray scattering, protein crystallography and micro-beam scattering. The hard X-rays from the BL12XU beamline are generated from an undulator, which was completed and installed in SPring-8’s storage ring at the beginning of year 2000. A side line of BL12XU was completed in 2009 for hard X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. The beamline and experimental stations are designed for advanced research on highly correlated electronic systems and X-ray optics.

The two beamlines, which utilize X-ray light sources of specially high intensity, enable users from Taiwan and abroad to perform advanced experiments in the fields of life science, physics and chemistry. Since the opening of these beamlines for user operation, there have been generated in total 483 research proposals, 1657 user runs and 233 SCI papers in well known scientific journals.

On the day of the Tenth Anniversary Ceremony, a special tour of SPring-8 had been arranged for the distinguished guests from Taiwan to visit the Taiwan beamlines as well as other experimental facilities at SPring-8.