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Sun, October 23, 2022
What will be the next large science facility to require thousands of tons of superconducting wire? When will it begin construction? Since requirements of existing science facilities already exceed the performance limits of the Nb-Ti conductor technology shared by the multi-billion-dollar medical imaging market, and since there is no other billion-dollar market requiring performance beyond that of Nb-Ti at present, how can conductor manufacturing supply what is needed for the next billion-dollar facility, let alone other construction episodes beyond it?The applied superconductivity community has contemplated the questions above for some time, reflecting on the episodic nature of large projects and the wide gap between project requirements and products in the marketplace. In this plenary presentation, I will draw upon experiences with public-private partnerships established by the US Dept. of Energy (DOE) in the late 1990s to sustain “warm” manufacturing over decades and support innovation.