Harwell Science and Innovation Campus

The Harwell Synchrocyclotron was a particle accelerator based at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment campus near Harwell, Oxfordshire. Construction of the accelerator began in 1946 and it was completed in 1949. The machine was of the synchrocyclotron design, with a 1.62T magnet of diameter 110" (2.8m) allowing protons to be accelerated to energies of 160-175MeV. Accelerator physicist John Adams, who later went on to lead design of CERN's SPS, was instrumental in the design and construction of this machine. Its main function was basic nuclear and particle physics research, with a focus on proton-proton and proton-neutron scattering.Comparisons were frequently drawn between the second cyclotron at the Harvard Cyclotron Laboratory and the Harwell Synchrocyclotron, and in 1974 clinicians from Oxford's Radcliffe Infirmary led by Dr T Hockaday floated plans to replicate the proton therapy work carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital with the accelerator. Initial preclinical research took place, including the measurement of proton beams in tissue equivalent plastics as part of the development of phantom materials by researchers at St Bartholomew's Hospital. Interest in this project continued into 1978, when the MRC met to make a funding decision. No clinical trials ever took place and decommissioning of the former AERE site began in the 1990s. Demolition of Hangar 7, which housed both the synchrocyclotron and the ZETA nuclear fusion project, was completed during financial year 2005/2006.

ZETA, short for Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly, was a major experiment in the early history of fusion power research. Based on the pinch plasma confinement technique, and built at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in the United Kingdom, ZETA was larger and more powerful than any fusion machine in the world at that time. Its goal was to produce large numbers of fusion reactions, although it was not large enough to produce net energy. ZETA went into operation in August 1957 and by the end of the month it was giving off bursts of about a million neutrons per pulse. Measurements suggested the fuel was reaching between 1 and 5 million kelvins, a temperature that would produce nuclear fusion reactions, explaining the quantities of neutrons being seen. Early results were leaked to the press in September 1957, and the following January an extensive review was released. Front-page articles in newspapers around the world announced it as a breakthrough towards unlimited energy, a scientific advance for Britain greater than the recently launched Sputnik had been for the Soviet Union. US and Soviet experiments had also given off similar neutron bursts at temperatures that were not high enough for fusion. This led Lyman Spitzer to express his scepticism of the results, but his comments were dismissed by UK observers as jingoism. Further experiments on ZETA showed that the original temperature measurements were misleading; the bulk temperature was too low for fusion reactions to create the number of neutrons being seen. The claim that ZETA had produced fusion had to be publicly withdrawn, an embarrassing event that cast a chill over the entire fusion establishment. The neutrons were later explained as being the product of instabilities in the fuel. These instabilities appeared inherent to any similar design, and work on the basic pinch concept as a road to fusion power ended by 1961. In spite of ZETA's failure to achieve fusion, the device went on to have a long experimental lifetime and produced numerous important advances in the field. In one line of development, the use of lasers to more accurately measure the temperature was tested on ZETA, and was later used to confirm the results of the Soviet tokamak approach. In another, while examining ZETA test runs it was noticed that the plasma self-stabilised after the power was turned off. This has led to the modern reversed field pinch concept. More generally, studies of the instabilities in ZETA have led to several important theoretical advances that form the basis of modern plasma theory.

The Faraday Institution is a British research institute aiming to advance battery science and technology. It was established in 2017 as part of the UK's wider Faraday Battery Challenge. It states its mission as having four key areas: "electrochemical energy storage research, skills development, market analysis and early-stage commercialisation". The Institution is headquartered at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus near Oxford. It is a limited company and is a registered charity with an independent board of trustees.

The National Chemical Emergency Centre (NCEC) is a former UK government agency, now privately owned as part of Ricardo plc, providing information related to chemical accidents (spillages and fires) to emergency services in the United Kingdom and other countries. The NCEC is headquartered on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in the Vale of White Horse in Oxfordshire.

The European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications or ECSAT is a research centre belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA) and located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It was created in 2009 and moved to its present building in 2013. Staff work on activities linking space to telecommunications, integrated applications, climate change, technology and science.The development of ECSAT was in line with the growing efforts of the United Kingdom in the space sector, including the creation of the UK Space Agency in 2010 and the increase in the economic contribution of that country to ESA. At the same time, ESA benefited from a closer relation with the UK space sector and corrected a historical anomaly whereby the United Kingdom, while being one of the biggest ESA contributors, did not host any of the agency's major centres. There is an earlier ESA facility on the campus, the ESA Business Incubation Centre (BIC) Harwell, which is intended to assist in the development of technology transfer ideas, helping to transform them into viable businesses. ECSAT hosts the ESA Climate Office, responsible for defining and implementing ESA's Climate Change Initiative Programme.

The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) was the main centre for atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from 1946 to the 1990s. It was created, owned and funded by the British Government. A number of early research reactors were built here starting with GLEEP in 1947 to provide the underlying science and technology behind the design and building of Britain's nuclear reactors such as the Windscale Piles and Calder Hall nuclear power station. To support this an extensive array of research and design laboratories were built to enable research into all aspects of nuclear reactor and fuel design, and the development of pilot plants for fuel reprocessing. The site became a major employer in the Oxford area. In the 1990s demand for government-led research had significantly decreased and the site was subsequently gradually diversified to allow private investment, and was known from 2006 as the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

Royal Air Force Harwell or more simply RAF Harwell is a former Royal Air Force station, near the village of Harwell, located 4.8 miles (7.7 km) south east of Wantage, Oxfordshire and 17 miles (27 km) north west of Reading, Berkshire, England. The site is now the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus which includes the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

Diamond Light Source (or Diamond) is the UK's national synchrotron light source science facility located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. Its purpose is to produce intense beams of light whose special characteristics are useful in many areas of scientific research. In particular it can be used to investigate the structure and properties of a wide range of materials from proteins (to provide information for designing new and better drugs), and engineering components (such as a fan blade from an aero-engine) to conservation of archeological artifacts (for example Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose). There are more than 50 light sources across the world. With an energy of 3 GeV, Diamond is a medium energy synchrotron currently operating with 32 beamlines.

The Atlas Computer Laboratory on the Harwell, Oxfordshire campus shared by the Harwell Laboratory was one of the major computer laboratories in the world, which operated between 1961 and 1975 to provide a service to British scientists at a time when powerful computers were not usually available. The main user population was the UK universities and some government agencies. Now called the Atlas centre, it is home to European Space Agency's (ESA) Business Incubation Centre (ESA BIC), the Space Applications and Telecommunications (ESA ESCAT), and the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) Innovations Technology Access Centre (I-TAC).

The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is one of the national scientific research laboratories in the UK operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It began as the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, merged with the Atlas Computer Laboratory in 1975 to create the Rutherford Lab; then in 1979 with the Appleton Laboratory to form the current laboratory. It is located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus at Chilton near Didcot in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It has a staff of approximately 1,200 people who support the work of over 10,000 scientists and engineers, chiefly from the university research community. The laboratory's programme is designed to deliver trained manpower and economic growth for the UK as the result of achievements in science.

Nimrod (National Institute Machine Radiating on Downs, "the Mighty Hunter" Nimrod; name attributed to W. Galbraith) was a 7 GeV proton synchrotron operating in the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom between 1964 and 1978. Nimrod delivered its last particles at 17:00 hrs on 6 June 1978. Although roughly contemporary with the CERN PS its conservative design used the "weak focussing" principle instead of the much more cost-effective "strong-focussing" technique, which would have enabled a machine of the same cost to reach much higher energies. The design and construction of Nimrod was carried out at a capital cost of approximately £11 million. It was used for studies of nuclear and sub-nuclear phenomena. Nimrod was dismantled and the space it occupied reused for the synchrotron of the ISIS neutron source.

Central Laser Facility (CLF) is a research facility in the UK. It is part of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The facility is dedicated to studying the applications of high energy lasers. It was opened in 1976. As of 2013 there are 5 active laser laboratories at the CLF: Vulcan, Astra Gemini, Artemis, ULTRA, and OCTOPUS. The facility provides both high-power and high-sensitivity lasers for study across broad fields of science from atomic and plasma physics to medical diagnostics, biochemistry and environmental science. Also through the Centre for Advanced Laser Technology and Application (CALTA), CLF is responsible for laser development. DiPOLE is the brainchild of that project.