That's based on you calling for HEP to be defunded in favour of X-ray sources, pretty heavily implying that CERN somehow blocks the x-ray field. I'm just point

That's based on you calling for HEP to be defunded in favour of X-ray sources, pretty heavily implying that CERN somehow blocks the x-ray field. I'm just pointing out they it seems to be doing pretty well for itself, three dozen international facilities with commercial customers doesn't sound like particularly lean times. If mere over-subscription is to be given such weight, then I call for x-ray sources to be fully commercialized and the public money going to build medium energy gamma ray satellites! We ain't got even one of those flying at the moment so we basically don't know what happens in the sky at those energies. Hows that for reasonable? In reality the HEP people mostly actively chose that field in competition with atomic and molecular physics et al, and if you kill HEP for generation most of the new students will keep choosing something else.