Cockcroft Institute

The Cockcroft Institute is an international centre for Accelerator Science and Technology (AST) in the UK. It was proposed in September 2003 and officially opened in September 2006. It is a joint venture of Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool, the University of Manchester, the University of Strathclyde, the Science and Technology Facilities Council, and the Northwest Regional Development Agency. The institute is located in a purpose-built building on the Sci-Tech Daresbury campus, and in centres in each of the participating universities. The institute's aim is to provide the intellectual focus, educational infrastructure, and the essential scientific and technological facilities for Accelerator Science and Technology research and development, which will enable UK scientists and engineers to take a major role in accelerator design, construction, and operation for the foreseeable future. The institute is named after the Nobel prizewinner Sir John Cockcroft FRS. The present director of the Cockcroft Institute is Stewart Boogert, who replaced the previous director Peter Ratoff. Previous directors were Swapan Chattopadhyay and John Dainton.

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Hartree Centre

The Hartree Centre is a high performance computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) research facility focused on industry-led challenges. It was formed in 2012 at Daresbury Laboratory on the Sci-Tech Daresbury science and innovation campus in Cheshire, UK. The Hartree Centre is part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) which itself is part of United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI).

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Synchrotron Radiation Source

The Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at the Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire, England was the first second-generation synchrotron light source to produce X-rays. The research facility provided synchrotron radiation to a large number of experimental stations and had an operating cost of approximately £20 million per annum. SRS had been operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council. The SRS was closed on 4 August 2008 after 28 years of operation.

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261 m

NINA (accelerator)

NINA (National Institute's Northern Accelerator) was a particle accelerator located at Daresbury Laboratory, UK that was used for particle physics and as a source of synchrotron radiation.

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EMMA (accelerator)

The electron machine with many applications or electron model for many applications (EMMA) was a linear non-scaling FFAG (fixed-field alternating-gradient) particle accelerator at Daresbury Laboratory in the UK that could accelerate electrons from 10 to 20 MeV. A FFAG is a type of accelerator in which the magnetic field in the bending magnets is constant during acceleration. This means the particle beam will move radially outwards as its momentum increases. Acceleration was successfully demonstrated in EMMA, paving the way for future non-scaling FFAGs to meet important applications in energy, security and medicine. A linear non-scaling FFAG is one in which a quantity known as the betatron tune is allowed to vary unchecked. In a conventional synchrotron such a variation would result in loss of the beam. However, in EMMA the beam crossed these resonances so rapidly that their effect was not seen. EMMA used the ALICE accelerator as a source of electrons and was situated in the same laboratory (specifically, in one of the experimental areas at the base of the Nuclear Structure Facility tower) at STFC's Daresbury site. EMMA was a proof-of-principle machine; the experience gained in building this machine was useful for future muon accelerators (which could be used in neutrino factories), and also for proton and carbon ion particle accelerators, which have applications for cancer therapy. Non-scaling FFAGs are a good candidate for use in an accelerator-driven subcritical reactor system in which a non-critical fission core is driven to criticality by a small accelerator. Future electrical power generation could be influenced heavily by the use power stations consisting of a sub-critical core containing a material such as thorium, and a small accelerator capable of providing extra neutrons via a spallation target. EMMA was funded by the BASROC consortium, under the CONFORM umbrella. Commissioning of EMMA began in June 2010 when the beam was injected and sent around part of the ring. Full ring commissioning commenced in August 2010. In March 31 2011, full ring circumnavigation was completed to establish proof of principle. By May 2016, decommissioning of both EMMA and ALICE started, and in 2019 the process was completed, with most components being donated to other facilities.

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