A future for nuclear analytical techniques? Why not?

The choices of universities and national research institutions in supporting scientific research are increasingly justified on basis of, amongst others, relevance that has to be reflected by external, preferably sustainable funding of the research programmes. Many traditional fields of application such as environmental sciences do not offer a promising outlook in this respect. As a consequence, university research reactors face the closing of their facilities because of reallocations of university funds to more contemporary sciences such as molecular biology and nanotechnology. Therefore, laboratories operating nuclear analytical techniques (NAA, (TR)XRF, PIXE) need to use their creativity finding ways for participation in e.g. nanotechnology, cancer research or genomics. It requires an open mind on the opportunities, strengths and weaknesses of the techniques, and a departure of technique oriented research towards problem oriented research in which other nuclear techniques can be used. The unique features of radiotracers, nuclear imaging and nuclear beam techniques are discussed in view of the new areas mentioned in the above. Some examples of opportunities for nuclear analytical techniques in the above mentioned fields are given. (author)