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MERLIN reactor

AldermastonAssociated Electrical IndustriesBerkshire building and structure stubsNuclear power stubsNuclear research institutes in the United Kingdom
Nuclear research reactorsNuclear technology in the United KingdomResearch institutes in Berkshire

MERLIN reactor was a 10MWt pool-type research reactor at Aldermaston Court, Aldermaston, Berkshire, England which operated from 6 November 1959 until 1962. It was privately owned and operated by Associated Electrical Industries. It was opened by Prince Philip on 6 November 1959. The head of the reactor was Alan James Salmon, then aged 36 who had worked for AEI since leaving the RAF and had spent two years at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment studying reactor design before joining AEI Aldermaston.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article MERLIN reactor (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

MERLIN reactor
Red Lane,

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N 51.38 ° E -1.1461 °
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Aldermaston Park

Red Lane
RG7 4PB
England, United Kingdom
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Aldermaston
Aldermaston

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.

Orion (laser)

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.