Culham railway station

Reaction Engines Limited is a British aerospace manufacturer based in Oxfordshire, England.

Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) was a nuclear fusion experiment, testing a spherical tokamak nuclear fusion reactor, and commissioned by EURATOM/UKAEA. The original MAST experiment took place at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, Oxfordshire, England from December 1999 to September 2013. A successor experiment called MAST Upgrade began operation in 2020.

The Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak, or START was a nuclear fusion experiment that used magnetic confinement to hold plasma. START was the first full-sized machine to use the spherical tokamak design, which aimed to greatly reduce the aspect ratio of the traditional tokamak design. The experiment began at the Culham Science Centre in the United Kingdom in 1990 and was retired in 1998. It was built as a low cost design, largely using parts already available to the START team. The START experiment revolutionized the tokamak by changing the previous toroidal shape into a tighter, almost spherical, doughnut shape. The new shape increased efficiency by reducing the cost over the conventional design, while the field required to maintain a stable plasma was a factor of 10 less.

The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE) is the UK's national laboratory for fusion research. It is located at the Culham Science Centre, near Culham, Oxfordshire, and is the site of the Joint European Torus (JET), Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) and the now closed Small Tight Aspect Ratio Tokamak (START). Formerly known as UKAEA Culham, the laboratory was renamed in October 2009 as part of organisational changes at its parent body, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA).Since 2016, the director has been Professor Ian Chapman, and the centre has been engaged in work towards the final detailed design of ITER as well as preparatory work in support of DEMO. In 2014 it was announced the centre would house the new RACE (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments).

Appleford Railway Bridge carries the Cherwell Valley Line from Didcot to Oxford across the River Thames near the village of Appleford-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. It crosses the Thames on the reach between Clifton Lock and Culham Lock. Originally, a timber bridge was built at the approximate location of the present bridge; by December 1843, it was reportedly under construction, and was completed during the following year. By the 1850s, it has been replaced by a more substantial bridge principally composed of wrought iron so that heavier trains could be run along the line. A third bridge was completed in 1927, which was built out of steel; it is this structure that is presently used as of the 2010s.

Royal Naval Air Station Culham (RNAS Culham, also known as HMS Hornbill) was a former Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm station near Culham, Oxfordshire. It opened in 1944 as an All Weather Airfield for the Royal Navy. The airbase was used by Receipt and Despatch Unit No.2, No.1 Ferry Flight, 739 Photographic Trials and Development Unit and home to 1832 R.N.V.R. (Air) Squadron.The airbase is situated around 5 miles (8.0 km) south of the city of Oxford, with the village of Culham lying 1 mile (1.6 km) to west. The notable landmarks include the city of Oxford where through it runs The Isis, which then forms a loop around the airfield to the north, west and south as it flows south east. The market town of Abingdon-on-Thames is about 2 miles (3.2 km) to the north west. Didcot junction, where a line running north/south, intersects the Great Western Main Line, is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) south, with Culham railway station, on the north/south Oxford-Didcot line, at the south west corner of the airfield.The ground layout was typical of many bomber stations, with three runways. However it had many hangars, mostly sited around the field's perimeter. Initially HMS Hornbill was used to train reservists based in the Thames Valley area using several different types of aircraft including: Supermarine Seafire, a navalised Supermarine Spitfire fighter aircraft, Hawker Sea Fury, a single-seat fighter aircraft and North American Harvards, an American single-engine advanced trainer aircraft. In May 1947 the Photographic Trials and Development Unit was based at HMS Hornbill, and in 1951 1840 Naval Air Squadron operated from the airfield for a short time. Ab initio flight training of cadets from Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, flying primary gliders, was also undertaken here in the early 1950s.

The Joint European Torus (JET) was a magnetically confined plasma physics experiment, located at Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, UK. Based on a tokamak design, the fusion research facility was a joint European project with a main purpose of opening the way to future nuclear fusion grid energy. At the time of its design JET was larger than any comparable machine. JET was built with the hope of reaching scientific breakeven where the fusion energy gain factor Q =1.0. It began operation in 1983 and spent most of the next decade increasing its performance in a lengthy series of experiments and upgrades. In 1991 the first experiments including tritium were made, making JET the first reactor in the world to run on the production fuel of a 50–50 mix of tritium and deuterium. It was also decided to add a divertor design to JET, which occurred between 1991 and 1993. Performance was significantly improved, and in 1997 JET set the record for the closest approach to scientific breakeven, reaching Q = 0.67 in 1997, producing 16 MW of fusion power while injecting 24 MW of thermal power to heat the fuel.Between 2009 and 2011, JET was shut down to rebuild many of its parts, to adopt concepts being used in the development of the ITER project in Saint-Paul-lès-Durance, in Provence, southern France. In December 2020, a JET upgrade commenced using tritium, as part of its contribution to ITER. On 21 December 2021, using deuterium-tritium fuel, JET produced 59 megajoules during a five-second pulse, beating its previous 1997 record of 21.7 megajoules, with Q = 0.33.In November 2023, a petition asking that JET not be closed was started, with scientists fearing a research time gap and personnel loss between JET's closure and the start of ITER's operations. JET finished operations in December 2023, with decommissioning expected to last until 2040.

Appleford railway station serves the village of Appleford-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England, as well as nearby settlements such as Sutton Courtenay. It is on the Cherwell Valley Line between Didcot Parkway and Banbury, 55 miles 16 chains (88.8 km) measured from London Paddington. The station and all trains serving it are operated by Great Western Railway.

Appleford-on-Thames is a village and civil parish on the south bank of the River Thames about 2 miles (3 km) north of Didcot, in the Vale of White Horse district, in Oxfordshire. It was part of Berkshire until the 1974 local government boundary changes. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 350. On 1 April 2000 the civil parish was renamed from "Appleford" to "Appleford on Thames".

Nuneham Viaduct, also known as Nuneham Railway Bridge and the Black Bridge is near the town of Abingdon-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England. It is a two-span, bowstring truss bridge that carries the Didcot to Oxford section of the Cherwell Valley Line across the River Thames between Abingdon Lock and Sandford Lock. Its name is derived from the neighbouring Nuneham House. The total length is 99 yards (91 m); the southern and northern ends are respectively 57 miles 24 chains (92.22 km) and 57 miles 29 chains (92.32 km) from Paddington (via Didcot station).As well as passenger trains, the line over the bridge carries freight from the Port of Southampton to distribution centres in the Midlands and North of England. By 2023, up to forty freight trains per day were using the route, which is part of the core UK intermodal freight network, and was to have been part of the proposed Electric Spine. From March 2022, the bridge suffered a progressive failure with sinking of the southern end of the southern span. This led to its temporary closure to all rail traffic on 3 April 2023 and a major remedial project being undertaken; the line was reopened to traffic on 9 June 2023.

The Thames Path is a National Trail following the River Thames from one of its sources near Kemble in Gloucestershire to the Woolwich foot tunnel, south east London. It is about 185 miles (298 km) long. A path was first proposed in 1948 but it only opened in 1996.The Thames Path's entire length can be walked, and a few parts can be cycled. Some parts of the Thames Path, particularly west of Oxford, are subject to flooding during the winter. The river is also tidal downstream from Teddington Lock and the lower parts of these paths may be underwater if there is a particularly high tide, although the Thames Barrier protects London from catastrophic flooding. The Thames Path uses the river towpath between Inglesham and Putney and available paths elsewhere. Historically, towpath traffic crossed the river using many ferries, but few of these crossings exist now and some diversion from the towpath is necessary.

Abingdon Junction railway station was a junction station for the branch line to Abingdon. It was opened by the Abingdon Railway Company on 2 June 1856 along with the branch, and was subsequently closed and replaced by Radley railway station on 8 September 1873. Radley station was in a more convenient place for access. At the same time as the station's opening, the next station to the south, formerly known as Abingdon Road was renamed Culham.In 1837 the first Bill for a railway to Abingdon was laid before Parliament; it would have brought a direct line from Didcot to Oxford through the town. The House of Commons passed the Bill, but the Lords rejected it. The Bill for the Oxford line was revived in the following year, but so strong was the opposition of Mr. Duffield, Abingdon's M.P., that the proposed line was forced to by-pass Abingdon; it eventually opened on 12 June 1844 and ran no nearer to Abingdon than the village of Radley, some two miles to the east.Located at the point where the branch diverges from the main line, Abingdon Junction was provided purely for interchange for services to Oxford, Culham and Didcot and was not shown in timetables. No proper road access to the station was provided and only modest passenger facilities were afforded consisting of two facing wooden platforms with a small building constructed on the up main side and a run-around loop for branch services and connections with the main line.Following the conversion of the branch to standard gauge in November 1872, works began to extend the line a further ¾ mile northwards alongside the main line to reach a new station at Radley where it terminated in a bay platform on the station's west side. The station building from Abingdon Junction was transported to Radley, where it was sited just south of the road bridge, most likely on the down side. It remained there until well into British Railways days and was used by gangers and platelayers. The remains of Abingdon Junction survived for several years before their demolition, so that the only trace of the station today is the widened formation to the west of the main line before the Abingdon branch curved away.