The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is a joint research facility situated in Grenoble, France, supported by 22 countries (13 member countries: France, Germany, Italy, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia; and 9 associate countries: Austria, Portugal, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, India and South Africa). Some 8,000 scientists visit this particle accelerator each year, conducting upwards of 2,000 experiments and producing around 1,800 scientific publications. History Inaugurated in September 1994, it has an annual budget of around 100 million euros, employs over 630 people and is host to more than visiting scientists each year. In 2009, the ESRF began a first major improvement in its capacities. With the creation of the new ultra-stable experimental hall of 8,000 m2 in 2015, its X-rays are 100 times more powerful, with a power of 100 billion times that of hospital radiography devices. The second improvement to the facilities, now named the "Extremely Brilliant Source" (ESRF-EBS), took place between 2018 and 2020. and again improved its X-ray power by a factor of 100, or 10,000 billion more powerful than X-rays used in the medical field. It became the first fourth-generation high-energy synchrotron in the world. The first electron beam tests began on November 28, 2019. The facility reopened to users on August 25, 2020. General description The ESRF physical plant consists of two main buildings: the experiment hall, containing the 844 metre circumference ring and forty tangential beamlines; and a block of laboratories, preparation suites, and offices connected to the ring by a pedestrian bridge. The linear accelerator electron gun and smaller booster ring used to bring the beam to an operating energy of 6 GeV are constructed within the main ring. Until recently bicycles were provided for use indoors in the ring's circumferential corridor. Unfortunately they have been removed after some minor accidents. But even before this it was not possible to cycle continuously all the way around, since some of the beamlines exit the hall. Research at the ESRF focuses, in large part, on the use of X-ray radiation in fields as diverse as protein crystallography, earth science, paleontology, materials science, chemistry and physics. Facilities such as the ESRF offer a flux, energy range and resolution unachievable with conventional (laboratory) radiation sources. Study results In 2014, ancient books destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 are read for the first time