MERLIN reactor

The Church of St Mary the Virgin, Aldermaston, is the Church of England parish church of Aldermaston in Berkshire. The church, which is dedicated to St Mary, dates from the mid-12th century and has examples of Norman and Jacobean architecture. The building has had a number of extensions, particularly in the 13th, 14th, 15th and 17th centuries.

Aldermaston Court is a country house and private park built in the Victorian era for Daniel Higford Davall Burr with incorporations from a Stuart house. It is south-east of the village nucleus of Aldermaston in the English county of Berkshire. The predecessor manor house became a mansion from the wealth of its land and from assistance to Charles I during the English Civil War under ownership of the Forster baronets of Aldermaston after which the estate has alternated between the names Aldermaston Park and Aldermaston Manor. The estate became dominated by its neo-Elizabethan mansion after a fire of 1843 destroyed one third of the predecessor and various landscape features were added which have resulted in building and grounds being Grade II* listed. Between the turn of the 21st century and its closure in 2012, the estate has been a wedding venue, a conference centre, and a hotel. Aside from the manor house and its immediate surroundings, the park is home to office buildings and a lake.

Aldermaston is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. In the 2011 census, the parish had a population of 1,015. The village is in the Kennet Valley and bounds Hampshire to the south. It is approximately 8 miles (13 km) from Newbury, Basingstoke, and Reading and is 46 miles (74 km) from London. Aldermaston may have been inhabited as early as 1690 BCE; a number of postholes and remains of cereal grains have been found in the area. Written history of the village is traced back at least as far as the 9th century CE, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles showed that the Ealdorman of Berkshire had his country estate in the village. The manor of Aldermaston was established by the early 11th century, when the village was given to the Achard family by Henry I; the manor is documented in the Domesday Book of 1086. St Mary the Virgin Church was established in the 13th century, and some of the original Norman architecture remains in the building's structure. The last resident Lord of the Manor, Charles Keyser, died in 1929. Aldermaston Court, the manor estate and house, was requisitioned for armed forces use during the Second World War. The name "Aldermaston" is well known in connection with the UK's nuclear weapons programme, as well as the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), which develops, maintains, and disposes of the UK's nuclear weaponry is in the parish. Built on the site of the former RAF Aldermaston, the plant has been the destination of numerous Aldermaston Marches. Until 2006, the village was home to the Aldermaston Pottery, which was established by Alan Caiger-Smith and Geoffrey Eastop in 1955.

The A340 is a major road in the south of England, portions of which are known as the Aldermaston Road, Tadley Hill, Basingstoke Road and Tidmarsh Road.

Royal Air Force Aldermaston, or more simply RAF Aldermaston, is a former Royal Air Force station located 8 miles (13 km) east of Newbury, Berkshire and 9.8 miles (15.8 km) southwest of Reading, Berkshire, England. Originally built as an RAF Bomber Command airfield during 1941-1942, Aldermaston was transferred to the United States Army Air Forces in August 1942. Placed under the jurisdiction of Eighth Air Force, it was home to several Douglas C-47 Skytrain Troop Carrier Groups. It was transferred to Ninth Air Force in 1943 primarily as a Troop Carrier Command base. Returned to RAF Control at the end of 1945, it was used by Technical Training Command before being placed on Care and Maintenance. In 1946, it was transferred to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and used by BOAC aircraft for training.Also used by the Ministry of Aircraft Production for Supermarine Spitfire assembly and flight testing, the airfield closed in 1950 and the site became home of the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (later the Atomic Weapons Establishment) from 1950.

Sceptre was a series of early fusion power devices based on the Z-pinch concept of plasma confinement, built in the UK starting in 1956. They were the ultimate versions of a series of devices tracing their history to the original pinch machines, built at Imperial College London by Cousins and Ware in 1947. When the UK's fusion work was classified in 1950, Ware's team was moved to the Associated Electrical Industries (AEI) labs at Aldermaston. The team worked on the problems associated with using metal tubes with high voltages, in support of the efforts at Harwell. When Harwell's ZETA machine apparently produced fusion, AEI quickly built a smaller machine, Sceptre, to test their results. Sceptre also produced neutrons, apparently confirming the ZETA experiment. It was later found that the neutrons were spurious, and UK work on Z-pinch ended in the early 1960s.

The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) with its main site on the former RAF Aldermaston and has major facilities at Burghfield, Blacknest and RNAD Coulport. AWE plc, responsible for the day-to-day operations of AWE, is owned by the Ministry of Defence and operated as a non-departmental public body. Until June 2021, AWE plc was owned by a consortium of Jacobs Engineering Group, Lockheed Martin UK and Serco through AWE Management Ltd, which held a 25‑year contract (until March 2025) to operate AWE, although all the sites remained owned by the Government of the United Kingdom which had a golden share in AWE plc. In November 2020, it was announced that the Ministry of Defence had triggered a contractual break point and would take ownership of AWE Plc in July 2021.The establishment is the final destination for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament's Aldermaston Marches march from Trafalgar Square, London. The first Aldermaston March was conceived by the Direct Action Committee and took place in 1958.

The River Enborne is a river that rises near the villages of Inkpen and West Woodhay, to the West of Newbury, Berkshire and flows into the River Kennet. Its source is in the county of Berkshire, and part of its course forms the border between Berkshire and Hampshire. Despite the name, the river does not run through the village of Enborne, although it does run through Enborne Row.

Paices Wood Country Parkland is a country park on the edge of the village of Aldermaston in Berkshire, England. The parkland is under the management of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust.

Aldermaston Gravel Pits is a 24.6-hectare (61-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Aldermaston in Berkshire. It was purchased by Natural England in 2003. This site consists of mature flooded gravel workings surrounded by dense fringing vegetation, trees and scrub, affording a variety of habitats for breeding birds and a refuge for wildfowl. The irregular shoreline, with islands, promontories, sheltered eutrophic pools and narrow lagoons provides undisturbed habitat for many water birds including surface feeding ducks such as teal (Anas crecca) and shoveler (Anas clypeata). The surrounding marsh and scrub are important for numerous birds including nine breeding species of warblers, water rails (Rallus aquaticus), kingfishers (Alcedoa atthis) and an important breeding colony of nightingales (Luscinia megarhynchos).

The Orion Laser Facility (also known as the Orion Laser) is a high power laser facility based at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) on the former RAF Aldermaston site in the United Kingdom. Construction to build Orion began in 2006 and its first shot was fired in 2010. The building houses a large neodymium glass laser system and a target chamber, and it is the biggest experimental facility of high-energy density physics in the UK.Orion delivers 10 “long-pulse” one-nanosecond duration beams and two petawatt (PW) “short-pulse” 0.5 picosecond duration beams. The facility also provides a comprehensive suite of optical, particle, and x-ray plasma diagnostics to understand the plasma conditions created through the laser interaction. Orion plays a key role in AWE’s core mission to support the safety, reliability and performance of nuclear warheads throughout their lifecycle under the UK’s ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which bans live testing. It can replicate the extreme temperatures, pressures and densities found at the heart of a nuclear explosion for the study and understand the physics phenomena that occur in these environments.Orion also dedicates a proportion of its time for collaborative academic research in the UK and internationally, which is managed through an academic peer-review process by the Central Laser Facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Academic research ranges from the conditions relevant to inertial fusion energy, planetary and solar physics, high-energy particle acceleration, black holes and much more.

West's Meadow, Aldermaston is a 1.2-hectare (3.0-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest south of Aldermaston in Berkshire.The site consists of two fields bounded by hedgerows and a small stream. It has been managed by grazing since the 1950s.The site is private land with no public access.