STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, yes, this… one of the things I found writing this was I'd end up in the most ridiculous rabbit… rabbit holes of,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Another activity. There's a couple in the backup slides, one of my favorites, which is a woman who ran in society called Atomic Gardening, which had heavy harl support, and was very keen on irradiated food, so in fact, they said that she went to the newspaper for more.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Eating a roast dinner that had been cooked 3 years before, and left in a strawberry of a hard one with a radioactive.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: isotope, and thus irradiated, but perfectly safe to eat. But I don't know how fast it was. But honestly, as…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It is a cracking ring, because it's really interesting to go back to the very strong enthusiasm about nuclear power, about the nuclear era, optimism about the future that maybe we have now lost in some ways.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So yeah, I'm not, not a historian. I have selected things like… there are always sending slits. I have a few sources.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the, the whole of the book,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, Harveball the Enigma reveals, it came out about 20 years ago.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: For the 60th anniversary, and independence and Deterrence, Britain and Atomic Energy, I've managed to get bits of this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: full access to a copy, in this time. But this is an official UK Atomic Energy Authority history from 1974, and various, fellow Royal Society biographies, particularly John Adams, Jeffrey.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The most… the last one of those were written by Norm Kevin,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You know, you know, completely. The final one is a very interesting one, Science, Policy, and Attachment. I don't know, I mean, you could read the whole 300 thing, I think it's… I think it's interesting. Just going through that dimensions of CERN,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, a lot of the world, Alexis is extremely, informative about what's happening.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The Aces, and where we get to it now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so, RAF Harwell. So, built in 1935, during British rearmament, so the interwar period when we decided to do lots of re-arming, and then operational from 1937. It was a split between Chilton, East Henwood, and Colwell Parishes,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The report suggests that a commanding officer suggested on sort of an RF Halwell officer location at his house.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: upcoming various places. What I have looked up more recently is the actual locations of this. So this is the paragraph that they were at the time, and so you can see Harwell.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: is up here, Chilton is down here, East Tenderer is here, and then if we look at that superimposed on the modern map, you can see that a decent bulk of the site is in… as it is now, is in Chilton, some of it's in Harwell, and yeah, a reasonable chunk in East Tenderer as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: part of the reason the UK Health Security Agency has been very keen on referring to the site at Schilten, but obviously Harwell is stuck in many places for other things.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, RF Harwell looked, a bit like this. This is an aerial photograph from, 1940… late, 1944 or something. So you can see the runways.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: On here, so various bits of this, you know, still around, some of the buildings still around.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I guess two things to bring up, so obviously.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: you could probably do an entire… you could definitely do an entire military history, seminar, kind of things that happened. So, an interesting one is prototype gasolt Launch System for aircraft. So this was built here, on a field, which is now where the Moderna, the new Moderna buildings are.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that was excavated, a couple of years ago, and, you can see… you can see the outline of that. And some of that was also used for, the storage related to nuclear activities on site.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And the other thing that, that happened is also in this memorial for this, is, various separations, including wooden, SV Porsa gliders, which were then sent to the D-Day landings. So, essentially, you have a big glider full of soldiers and equipment, you can then launch it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Silently from an aircraft, and then it would die in a crash in a surprisingly high number of cases, or it would land, and then people would get out, and…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Do you, core things.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so, how's this… how do we go onto atomic energy from here? So, we had,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: yeah, a meeting… so various things happening during World War II, which I won't go into,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That, again, would be a sort of only seminar, but yeah, the UK contribution to the Manhattan Project was significant, and it was under the codename Dube Alloys. And towards the end of all of this, Chadwick, Oliphon, Coprop, Iiles, Harry Massey, and
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Oprah Skinner all had a meeting in Washington in November 1944. So the things they wanted
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: where they wanted a location that was near Oxford or Cambridge, because those were internationally important new clipper exploratories. Helcroft had a preference for Cambridge. To me, it's not immediately clear why only Oxbridge, given that there were substantial new clippers excluded at other universities, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, there are
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's not obvious to me that it has to be Oxford Cambridge, but there is a thing in this country where if something can be put near Oxford Cambridge, there is… well, I should come back to that later on.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But in fairness proximity to London.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So London was also likely to be a factor, which would rule out a lot of places in the Midlands, or North, or really Scotland. And it was to be run as part… yeah, so this organization was also to be run as part of the Ministry of Supply, which was a government department which supplied equipment to armed abortons in a fairly broad definition of the word.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so, coastal location.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: or RAF station would be ideal. You could construct atomic piles and hangars, and you already had a lot of utilities and services that were present.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the Air Ministry were not very keen on giving up any of their airfields that they had, so many of them had built up so, you know, so massively. So they offered Duxford and Depton.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But they also wanted to keep East Anglia Airfields for cold water, so Duxwood or Debden were the 8 ones that they, they need to keep. Duxwood being fairly near Cambridge, is now a,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, it's now an airfield and, the Imperial War Museum, so you can go there, it's a good day out, you can see lots of planes and hangars and so on. According to these, Duxford did not have enough water supply, so they knew that they would need to cool, all the actors,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And in Depton, the water table's too high, so unseeable for borrowing waste. The standards of nuclear waste storage at the time were not… not what they are now, but, you know, everywhere. So, these two were ruled out, so they went back and said, you need to give up one of your other airfields.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, the options they went through, and there's… I think there's a longer list, I haven't been able to see exactly what, but we can see all of these on here. So, we've got Oxford in Cambridge, we've got Cambridge in red, Oxford in red, London over here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so, yeah, so you can see Devden and Duxville being to Cambridge, adjacent one, so Devon being sort of near south of Walden.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then the ones that they're interested in, RF Benson, RF Harwell, both, obviously, in the local area here. And then RAF South is certainly near Cirencester, so north of Swindon. And there's a couple of more distant ones, so RF Pershaw, which is…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the Evesham, Worcester, that kind of area, up towards Coventry.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And I have Netherland, which, is down here, near… yeah, sort of near phasing stoke.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, these ones are excluded as too distant for what they wanted. They came down to Harlewell and Benson, and the choice between Hall and Benson was settled over a meal of bread, cheese, beer, and pickled onions, at a now-demolished pub in Chilton Village.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Orson Green. An important historical footnote is that the Planners' Lunch was only popularized as a term after this meeting, after this meeting. At the time, they would not likely have referred to it as a Planners Lunch.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But this is a cheese bureau's, attempt to get people for equal cheese, which, you know, has existed.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: 16 months of it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so, foundation. So, yeah, Prime Minister… so, Churchill was involved in the early stages, but was no longer Prime Minister, so Clements aptly announced the foundation of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment Harwell, 29th of October 1945.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What's interesting here, and I don't have time… I, A, don't understand exactly what was going on in everyone's heads, or on paper, the decision as to actually build an atomic bomb was not taken until over a year later. But they kind of set up a lot of stuff they knew they would need for either civil or,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: or military UK production.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But this is an interesting point, I think, in terms of what people are thinking about.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But, you know, it was decided that the UK would be a nuclear power in the broadest sense. We would have some nuclear stuff.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Right, so we can look this up in the side, so we can see the transcript of the, the debate in Parliament. So Mr W.S. Morrison asked the Prime Minister what steps were being taken to develop research on the use of atomic energy in this country.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The Prime Minister, in accordance with the recommendation, blah, blah, blah.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The government have decided to set up a research and experimental establishment covering all aspects of the isotonic energy. Accommodation is being provided for the establishment at Harwell Airfield and McDipkon.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The guidance that the danger is negligible, and in view of the importance to this work to the service department's responsibility for research on the subject, so it was at that point with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, so an early precursor to, sort of, the Science Ministry, DC kind of… kind of entity we have now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, has hitherto rested with them, should be transferred to the Ministry of Supply. The Tube Alloy's Directorate, so this was the code name for the, British Contributions for Patton project.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: will accordingly become part of that ministry. The DSIR will be represented on. Mr Morrison, can the Right Honourable Gentleman say what financial assistance it is proposed to give to this research? Prime Minister? The cost will have to fall upon the government.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Which is the kind of non-answer that I don't know if you get away with. Mr Byzlan, is the right honourable Gentleman aware that, research on atomic energy is inseparable from production, and really effective research would involve an expenditure of at least 30,000 or £40,000, the Prime Minister. I'm very fully advised on his answers.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We can, does this change of control to department more closely associated with the military?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: indicate the government are more concerned about the weapon value than its production value? The Prime Minister. No, not at all. The Ministry of Supply is also engaged on civilian production. This is a mistake to suggest it is entirely concerned with weapons. And of course, at this point, they hadn't decided, you know, to build the weapon, so this was… this is true.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Will the Right Honourable Gentleman consider making the report of the advisory committee available to members of this House? No, sir, I could not accept that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, I don't know if that was ever released.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: advisory board. If you go on the Bank England website, you can look up what 30,000 to 40,000… 30 to 40 million would buy you.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's quite helpful. So, inflation has increased by a factor of $3,000 in this time. So this is about $1.5 billion in today's money. This is actually, I think, a lowball estimate for how much it would take, even now, from scratch, to build
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: your own nuclear program. Yeah. In 1945, 40,000 was a colossal… 40 million was a colossal sum. You could have built 50,000 new homes, 100,000 new cars, several major warships.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Sorry.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: A lot of money. And what did we get for this? So, 1947, a lot of pre… a lot of houses were built, so prefabs, small, you know, envelopes that looked like this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: See your space.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, and the rest of the structure that was set up at the time, so this was kept within the government ministry, one beings by our, as I said, organization, at the Department of Atomic Energy, but it was definitely…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: under the controller, Lord Portal, who, at least by some accounts, was a complete waste of space, did not do any controlling. He was there, he was a figurehead, and the deputy controllers, three of them, at least initially, did all the actual work, so… he's an engineer who works on production, and this is this,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Wisely headquarters up, in Warrington. John Pockcroft was responsible for research, which was, of course, based at home.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: discussed. And then William Penny was on the weapon making.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, despite the fact that, as was previously advertised, there's no plan to actually build a weapon at this point, this started off at Fort Halstead, so a,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: yeah, a, sort of, defense research establishment in Seven Oaks in Kent, and that was moved to, RAF Aldermasten, where it is, yeah, so another old RAF base, in 1950, and that's where that side of savings is to this day, essentially.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So first reactor… so things got off the ground quite quickly, so 1st of January 1946 was the first starting.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So yeah, the graphite low-energy experimental file was the first whole reactant first in Western Europe.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And it was a top priority, so there was a seal that was intended to repair Parliament, which had been bombed in World War II, and that was diverted to Harwell, went critical on the 15th of August, 1947, with 100 watts, so approximately one light bulb, or one
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Hold incandescent light bulb, design power of 100 kilowatts, and then operated last year at 3 kilowatts until 1990.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's actually the last of the reactors to be decommissioned, so first in, last out.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It costs about $2.5 million, in… in the currency at the time, or $8.5 million today.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And a lot of other reactors we've built over the years are. So these… these are here in… in order, so, bleep.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Beppo, Dido, Pluto, there's a few different ones that kind of turn up there. Neptune is kind of moderate interest, because that was moved from our world to the nuclear submarine construction place at, Derby, which is a Rolls-Royce.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: facility now, and that is still operational, so that is the UK's only research reactor. This is all public information, although I think the connection between Neptune Harwell and Neptune Derby is not in that many places, but nevertheless, there's a report on it from International Atomic Energy Authority.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Well, this will be fine. Favorite name of these, Daphne… Dido and Pluto's Handmaiden for Nuclear Historians. So, a strong tradition of terrible acronyms that survives to this day.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so where do we go from here? So, world's first synchrotron. One of the things I did not realize until I started this was the world's first synchrotron was
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: sorry, to the UK. So there's a betatron, from the US to the Royal Arsenal of Woolwich.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So in East London, performed disposal tasks, never actually used, and the team… the team there realised they could convert it to a synchrotron, managed to achieve a MEBA in August 1946, two months before the American effort.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And that was later shipped to Melbourne, to the telecommunications search establishment, so it was a sort of radar-related place.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Bye.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there's a picture, this picture right here. There's quite a detailed history of this, J.D. Lawson wrote, I guess, about 30 years ago.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Which leads me neatly on to John Adams, who's… I kind of figure who intersects a lot of the different parts here. He was born in 1920, had an early career radar at Swanwich Melbourne, so he never… he never took a degree. It's, at least according to his…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Royal Society biography, it's because his father was shell-shocked from World War II, and the family, you know, he was obviously extremely bright, but they couldn't support him going to university, so he had to go
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: straight into a technical profession, but he was involved in the Synchrotron project at Malden. So he moved to AERE Harwell to work on accelerators in 1955.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And was then one of the first round of people to move to CERN in 1953, and led the Proton Synchron project. There's a nice picture of him here. He's essentially never seen without a pipe. I thought for a little while that he didn't have a pipe in his picture, but of course, it's his…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's in one of his hands, and he's got her microphone in the other.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So they're having a good time around the commissioning of the proton synchrotron.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That's, yeah, keep yourself there. Couldn't be able to do it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, so after his, sort of, initial sense of CERM,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Including being interim director after the death of Epicorius Barco I, who was, yeah, CERN Director General at the time. He then became column director, and was then CERN Director General, properly elected again in 1971 to 1980.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's an interesting career.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so the Harold Synchro Cyclotron is where I was going with this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, so John Adams was one of the people who worked on this, so this was the first big accelerator hole, so this was 110 inches diameter, so the synchrocyclotron is like a normal cyclotron, except with a compensation for the relativistic,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, the particle's going… getting relativistic, and the effect this has on the orbits.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There's a nice series of drawings, that you can see on the Science Museum.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: website, which happily are now out of copyright. First time I found these, they were in copyright, and…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I'm going through loads of, problems with this. But yeah, these, these were drawings that were done for the mural, which I've never found, for the, atomic energy mural that was going to be presented at a festival in Britain in 1951. So again, part of the nuclear optimism here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so another accelerator, that came up.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: was the tandem Van de Graaff. So, this was used for material testing, nuclear physics, between 1959 and 2002. It was demolished in 2005.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Other things that wasn't clear to me, this is apparently two attempts to demolish. I don't really know why, if it was demolished, whether you could just…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: probably a reused building, I guess. I don't know. Certainly that's… that's the case at Dasbury there, and the Brock Generator. And I found a paper from 2021, which is a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, an analysis of a 1990 experiment, so it's nice to know that people are still
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The proton linear accelerator, is another… so another big machine,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This started in 1954, due to a planned 600… and had a planned 600 MeV energy. So… reason for this was there was a belief that if you had the energy, you could get a lot of neutrons
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The target, this turned out to be a mismeasurement. This was too low in energy for this. So it ended up just being, 50 MeB in the end. It was moved to RAL, which I guess I haven't covered yet, but yeah, the R12 route in 1916.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so, the whole accelerators. So, we'll kind of go through
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: some of these, so 110-inch synco-cyclotron, 170V, electrons, electron in the accelerator, yeah, so not… not operating for very long.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In this case,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, yeah, gotchromptu accelerator, electron in an accelerator, proton in an accelerator around for a number of years.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then, yeah, Van de Roth.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: and drop generator.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Another electron linac, a Tamden Van de Graaff, which was also just there. Variable energy cyclotron, which ran until the 1980s, and then, kind of, three versions of the, electron linear accelerator EOS.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, there's kind of a, yeah, maximum energy of those 6 MeV, and then, yeah, the different sections of that were dropped out to do smaller electronics.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And the building for Helios is actually kind of opposite ISIS on the other side of the fence, so it's normally about the buildings, including
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Around the cycle.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So that's actually what's in that building.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: there's some sources here from Victoria's website, talking confusing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Particularly, so, the particular history for the Helios, the Max, which I haven't covered here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Let's listen to Victoria, who told me, died last week.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So I sent him to the end.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: All right, so, where does this leave us with UK ADA? So, yeah, Nuclear Energy was moved out of Ministry of Supply to a separate agency in 1954.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then I made this, well, this is quite fun, actually, this, Sankey diagram of what happens to the race bits.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, essentially, yeah, gradual divestment of functions, weapons, fuel processing, isotopes until open infusion programs left, and then a 21st century resurgence in new locations, so they've got a new site in Rotherham at the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Park campus. Research campus.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And this plan, sort of talking about furniture production.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the West Burton former, coal power station in Nottinghamshire, which is meant to come online, in the 20… I want to say 2040s, and will produce some bad energy, is the idea then.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, we can go through the different bits that got kind of hived off.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the first one, so, yeah, the foundation, 1954,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: At some point here, while the Sanji laboratory is set up, I haven't covered that, and my Sankey diagram is getting a little bit too complicated at this point.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, in 1971, there's a recognition that the different parts should do different things. So, the radiochemical center, which produced isotopes for medical applications and solvents hyped off.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And so that's… that's in pink, because that was a government-owned company, but one that was intended to reduce things for profit and operate in a more commercial way, so not a privatization exactly, but a companyization, I guess. And British Nuclear Fuels Limited, so all the reprocessing, fuel processing and so on, was also hyped up.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then… yeah, in 1973, the, I think around, Radiochemical center became Amsham PLC,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So they're a fully private company, which was then sold to American, GE Healthcare, and then at some point was just wiped down. So there is… there is no more of that. So other… other bits that are happening, so British Nuclear Fuels Limited, had a somewhat tortured history, and there are… there should be more bits coming off here,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But the interesting thing is that the Dorman Company, I call it Citrus. The Dorman company, British Nuclear Groups Limited, was then reactivated and became Great British Nuclear, and then the Labour government renamed that Great British Energy-Nuclear in 2023.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then all the bits related to the kind of, yeah, fishing, sort of, facilities for research and so on, that became the UK National Nuclear Laboratory in 2008. There's a recognition that some of this stuff was not being done in the private sector, so it had to be done there.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, let's have a little look at the top of this graph.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, yeah, this is 1995, so just further privatisation. So, AEA Technology Limited was set up as a fully private entity, and then that was sold to become Ricardo AEA, and then Ricardo Energy Environment, which you see
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: sort of big site on campus, and a large, just an energy and environment consultancy without, as far as I'm aware, particularly nuclear labor nowadays.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And another thing, another big split in 2004, so we have the kind of…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We basically have UK infusion only. It's, customize this air column.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: other locations. And then the… the decommissioning side, which is obviously becoming increasingly important over time, comes in, it comes in there as well, so they get signed up to Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and there's some kind of cross-link between British Nuclear Fuels and NDA, but…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And also, they lost control of the UK AA police. So that then becomes the nuclear conservative and then starts behaving.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Starts being on the same footing as, as the other, other police.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That exists.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So we have that. So, Eugene, a little bit more on this. This is a Soviet visit to Harwell in 1956. This is the first visit of Soviet's organicrushchev to the west.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And they arrived in Portsmouth by a recruiter, escorted by two.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: destroyers, and then had a bit of a journey, I guess, to London and Harwall. And Igor Khushov, who said the Soviet nuclear program, revealed that they had a nuclear fusion program, and they were doing similar work to the US and the UK on, having binches and other methods of plasma refinement.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So yeah, so he shared all the details there, which was all secret at the time. I learned in this that Kirch always referred to his beard, so he has very long beard, kind of down to about here, in this photo. Other photos of him show a beard more clearly, but I don't have time to talk to them. I guess. Depends on your priorities when you're choosing photos.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the next interesting thing that happens for your fusion, our model was, Zeta, so zero energy standard assembly. So this was, yeah, a toroidal machine, but not, not a tokamak, just a kind of pinch confinement, so that's successful confinement.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, yeah, when they started running with deuterium, they had huge neutron blocks observed, which they attributed internally to the fusion, and then became gradually more certain about. And there were, although work at Harvard was largely at this point, there were leaks and rumors at the press conference in January 1938. I quite like this, so you can see
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: John Copcroft is down… is down here, at one table, and then some journalists over here, and you can see the TV cameras and so on. And you can see, yeah, danger, extra high voltage from the Zeta machine behind them.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But they had a… yeah, they had quite an awkward climb down, so it's actually a bit in between the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: During the press conference, they, had a Brussels forum.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Brussels World Expo, and there was a small model of the Zisa machine there. That's a model of an English pub called The Lion and Unicorn, I think.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I can recommend a… a book about this. But yeah, so anyway, they had a… as we all know, they did not… they did not solve fusion power in 1958, so they did all climbed down a few months later, the neutrons were coming from plasma instabilities.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: People, I think, yeah, a lot of experts at the time thought that the… that the claim temperature is not high enough to reduce fusion anyway.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, fusion research was used… was moved to yet another airfield, Royal Naval Air Service Column 60, where it continues to this day.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so what comes next?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science, or NERNS. So, Enoch Powell, who is better known for later work, by which I mean becoming incredibly racist, or at least announcing that he was very racist, and doing a speech about
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: these things. He, at the time, was the Secretary to the Treasury, and had not revealed any particularly,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: exceptional news at the time. So he announced the founding of the new academic lab at Arwell on, Valentine's Day in 1957.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So it's another planted question here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, us Chancellor will state what steps are being taken to establish a national center for Nuclear Physics, where the Atomic Energy Authority and universities cooperate in research for nuclear physics. So, one of the problems this was trying to solve was that there was a big fence around Arlwell and, you know, armed police and a general air of
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: of secrecy, although, you know, increasingly work was… was more…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's similar at this point, but it's felt that a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: a, a laboratory without offence, or at least with a less severe offence, would be a, you know, with more cooperation directed at the university, from the university assuming that they were clients of, UK, it would be useful.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, a consultation between University Grants Committee, so kind of precursor to the research councils, AEA, and as far as concerned.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: government have decided to go to the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science, to provide common use by universities and others, facilities and equipment beyond the scope of individual universities and institutions. It will not replace the research being done in international universities, so this was a concern for universities because they, you know, in many cases have built reasonably substantial, accelerators at this point, and were concerned that they were going to be kind of sidelined in favor of
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: this thing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: it will not, yeah, not replace the research being done, nor will it affect the government's participation in the international scene for conferences in Geneva. So this was, of course, a few years after CERN would be officially bundled in 1954, so there was… yeah. I mean, not really that much discussion of how this affected CERN from a lot of people.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: involved in this at that time. But more on that a bit later.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And this was run as a subsidiary of UK AA in 20165, run for the Science Research Council, which is basically a precursor to what we have now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Does that cancels this experience here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so this is quite fun. Standards for working at height changed a lot since the 1950s. These guys could just fall off the roof, I think. But yeah, so they built MINROD, National Institute Machine Radiating Downs. That was at least one of the
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: claims for its name. I don't know if that's about where people were going for this. But yeah, this area was, at this time, sort of Berkshire, it was purchased, Berkshire Downs, moved to Walkshire happened.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: In 1974, local authority rearrangement. So yeah, it's a 7GB greater synchrotron at, what was the ending versus relevant high-energy lab.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Based in 1963.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, questions about Mimrod. Why build a machine that's powerful than those available in the USER? This is something that people are concerned about, but it's a nice, that's awesome material for this, so there's a kind of celebration of MIMROD.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That contains some… some quotes on this. So it's a, yeah, quote from, this is Dennis Watkinson to Joe Pickvance, who is part of our direct tool.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: At this point. Our machine is relying for this being a decade too late in its superiority in shielding ridge of experimental facilities. As it stands at the moment, there's some superiority in flux, but there's no harm to do with the trunk, so this is one…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: 1GB, like, multi-GB machine. Yes, other than a slightly higher repetition rate, it may well transpire that the electron can make up for this on the canvas martial arts direction.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Not mentioning the proton secret this way.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So Peter Kalmist's final by word on this from 1977, is…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: at that point, or later, I'm not sure, make sure you have hand, was that this was, yeah, NIMrod should have been built as a strong focusing accelerator by our energy, but we were lucky. The Nimrod energy proved to be an extraordinarily frequent one, much longer Japan spectroscopy sensors machine. So a lot of k-on-pion interaction comes out of that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So yeah, a little bit more on the design. So, there are a few different options, coming up. So fixed field alternating, gradient, options were… this is very difficult to build, which is…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That's fair.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, yeah, there are a few, sort of, we focusing.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Options…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And yeah, so in the end, so something, something along the lines of 8, 8 or 9, score. The final beam intensity at 1.5 times 10 to 13%, so comparing variably to its,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And of course, there was strong advice from John Adams not to build another strong focusing machine. I mean, they're already doing the PSSERN, and he said it wasn't guaranteed to work, and you didn't want to have two that failed, so that was why they were encouraged by him to…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: continue with the conventional, in essence.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, so go to a telegram, from, Victor Weisskoff, Senior Director General. Congratulations on the successful startup from Nimrod. Stop all in San Brady. Please have you with us in the field, and I hope we can help each other in building a still stronger base for European business in the future.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: which you could read his code for, but he then needs to get more heavily involved with CERN, possibly. But yeah, one of the people assigning that was Mervyn Hyne, who had gone over with John Adams, and apparently at some point were referred to as the Terrible Twins when they were at the CERN.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I don't know why. It's one of those kind of throwaway statements you see in a biography, and you think, what is that?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Nice, beer, Vicki Weiskov's, Sunday gin, win.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And yeah, so the… the previous source has a kind of, yeah, set of different congratulations from different parts around the world.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is a map of the Nimod beamines in 1977, so you can see you have, yeah, two
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: 2 going off here.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And, yeah, various beamlines radiating from there, to KLM beamlines and so on. So, yeah, there's a big experimental program here that, did not feel qualified to cover.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so, as I said, it's a taskbury Laboratory. So before Nimrod was even built, they got permission to build an electron supersonic Darsquite, which, as a…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: One of these things that keeps coming up. Only financially possible by limiting the rate of growth within a certain budget.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This is a 4 and then 5GB machine software operation from 1966, and actually, yeah, they… even before it was operational, there was his first proposal to start using the synchrotron for, light source activities, other than so on. This was shut down in 1977.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: warm up.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, joining the proton synchron, so this 300GB proton concerned, was going to be extremely expensive, particularly if involved in the laboratory.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: John Adams was making a… making a, like, strong attempt to bring cost-cutting measures. The UK eventually agreed to join, under the condition that the national accelerators wind down, which is one of those things that keeps… I don't see a kind of statement like this, somewhere, but this is the understanding, certainly, for all…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, as well. Did I reset mediums, the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yes, NATO is the name of this, if I can see from the task for me.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Northern Institute of Smash and Accelerator. So yeah, so Nina was shut down in 1977. The obstructing components were largely reused for the synchron radiation source, and then Nimrod in 1978.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So an interesting point here, this problem taken. It's epic. So, very serious proposal for a, 14 plus 14 GV
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: loading…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: electron positron Collider to be hosted around, I think it's the kind of final system there. So you can see that the Amina would be used as a booster for that, and NENA would presume have been shipped… well, possibly shipped from last being on scenario.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And then the second stage, which is also interesting, is a 200 dB proton range for electron proton collisions, so you could do, actually, Hera, like, like physics, but…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yes, sir.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: was presented to the Science Research Council in November 1974, around the time of the JSI discovery, so this was approved, you know, so yes, he was really good idea. But this was killed in practice because, Germany announced that they were going to build an electron dust on Earth.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So… There's no… not space for a UK one and a German one, so let's join in with that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: step by step, I'll give you this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: What's interesting is time, so this, has open questions from scientific case for Epic, Yes.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Yeah, what is the nature of the recently discovered substructure? So this is, yeah, 1974, 1975 stuff. What is the nature of the recently discovered substructure of protons and neutrons? What are the properties of these nucleon constituents practice protons? Are the blocks, which were invented to explain the properties of the elementary particles the same?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And are the quarks the same as part-ons? So, interesting. To me, this was… there was obviously a time when quarks were meant to be part-ons were discoveries were invented, then some quarks emerged.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Does the weak interaction have a non-zero range? And if so, what is the mediated particle?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So this is something where we know with hindsight that we have to get to 80 GB to, 80GB or more to actually see the interaction, see the W and Z photons. So this is not at the right energy level, but, you know, maybe if you're secure about the, zero nature.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Other new theories are unifying weak in electromagnetic interactions off right lines?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Another, yeah, tricky question that I think, yeah, ends up with SPS or all that. Why are there two sorts of neutrinos? Why, indeed, does the neon exist at all? Are there heavy electrons? And the tricky one, finally, why does nature distinguish between right and left, and what is the significance of the observed violation of timeliness?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, that is a good question.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Just get a second.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so this was, yeah, as I mentioned before, this was, this was canned compared to a bottle, so it should be a German product.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, this brings steelium to ISIS. So, the neutron scheduling experiments already with Dido, Pluto, and Harold, which is react to it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: establishment. Yeah, this was a popular thing for the kind of use sites now. 60s and 70s.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there was a proposal for a British high-flux beam reactor, which is almost impossible to find information about because Brookhaven built a high-flux beam reactor with the same name.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, that proposal was eventually rejected in favor of joining, at the time, France-Germity Code project, the Ansiti Lawrence at Grenoble.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But there was, at the time an interest in developing pulse neutralation source. There had already been some briefly to do this with the Helios electron in that, so you could bombard that on your target, and then it'd leave
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think it was a two-target setup, so electron to target, target to uranium target, and then we'd get neutrons from that. So this had already been demonstrated at some level, but, you know, a more serious possible each resource, was, considered.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: priority, and this gives you a different probe. I don't understand really much about what the differences are, but yeah, you can do things on different timescales, because you're not getting a continuous neutron stream. When you turn a reactor on, it just producing neutrons all the time to turn it off. And you can play some games with that, so you can, you know, you can shop the bins on, but generally.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Expiration source provides different sorts of things, and we know that it's very popular.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, it was a quick study and approval, after this 1975 epic cancellation.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This should be the next accelerator.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, hypoth component for use. So, it was needed to keep costs down. So, a choke from Nina, I don't actually realize from this event what a choke is, but it was a thing that was used on Nina.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There were beamline magnets, and a 1MW motor alternator set, so second-hand motor from a ship of collury, and a second-hand alternator for the Swedish tramline. So this came online in 1984, the rest is history.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, do a little interlude. So kind of entering Thatcher era now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: One fun thing, actually, that I haven't got on the slides is that in 1983, while ISIS was still… was in quite a late period of construction, they did consider canceling it.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: This was discussed in, in Cabinet, why don't we cancel the ISIS, project?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: How serious that was, I'm not entirely sure.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, effectively, there was a debate on leaving term, or at the very least, reducing expenditure, which bubbled under from 1983 to 1988.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So Robin Nicholson was chief scientific advisor to Tomorrow Thatcher at the time, and he was not convinced. Withdrawal concern must be contemplated as one option. I say, Dad would come to that.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: More likely to be recommendations to improve the cost effectiveness of CERN, and crucially to slow down the pace and hence the rate of spend on this area of research. There's no reason why the taxpayers of Europe and the USA should have to find a private race between two scientific clicks carried out at a pace determined largely by their own curiosity.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So very success, not… not very happy.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: there are actually, yeah, similar… similar statements from that during that time. And this… this was between 1983, when CERN discovered, the W b boson, and 1984, when they, when, W… bosons.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: When certain scientists who won the Nobel Prize in Physics, their discoveries still considered, you know, we don't actually need to do this at that pace. Doesn't matter if the discoveries come on the pace.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, I think it's clear that one of the things that keeps bubbling under is generally 5% selling is very expensive.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, yeah, there were, you know, various steps taken during this time to try to, you know, review this, understand, try to get, yeah, effectively, you know, 15% to 25% reduction in sensitive to the cost.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: All of which kind of changed a bit when, Chief Scientific Advisor changed from Robert Nicholson to Sean Faircloth, I think.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Was it this time when Margaret Thatcher was invited to CERN, had a wonderful time, came back saying, yes, we have to do this, and it changed the whole landscape? No, interestingly, this is where… that's in the 1970s, when she, was…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So there was… that would have been the administration when she was, assigned to Minister. So at that point, she was quite keen on it. But I think generally her opinion is on the utility of,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Undimensional search kind of just, yeah, hardened over… over the 1960s.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: There's another thing in the book quite that suggests that
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: you know, if ISIS is operating in the bright section of me making money, things like this.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Thanks. Everything's a meal.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And of course, a lot of the things where we changed, like the changes to the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: you know, diagram here, that all kind of dates back at tiny bit, so it's sensitive.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, I think she did change her mind at some point, because the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: the analogy of the Higgs boson, where an eminent person enters a room, and they get, you know, mauled by lots of people, and she being the person who gets mobbed by lots of people, she was, you know, very fond of that when that came out in
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's, like, early 90s or something.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, I think G… Yeah, so complicated relationships with your scientists need to take care of.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay. Nice.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, diamonds.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I think I've managed to get… managed to lose the source of this. The source for this is a 2022 Dig Into the Archives, by the same guy, actually, John Abel, who wrote the, science for the same Thatcher. The desire in the 1990s to build a new light source, funding is going to be 50% UK, 30% France, 20% Balkan Trust.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: where should be built. Dalisbury had, broad support, by a lot of people. It was vetoed by Welcoming Cups, although they apparently would not commit to saying this on paper, but nevertheless, this is in the documents, to…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: to Tony Blair, saying, yeah, welcome to Australia. It's not a morale. The morale was preferred by the French due to close proximity to the Eurostar, but of course the French were…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: going to cancel… well, they canceled this in favor of building their own sink control anyway.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, so this decision on where this would be sited, came to take Blair. His chief scientific advisor said that there was just something about Oxford that was wonderful, but couldn't be captured by universities in other parts of the country.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: It's time to be advisor called Stone Oxford guy. But the eventual decision, and I guess Tony Blair studied Oxford as well.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, the decision came to Denver's desk, and there's a little hunger, it's on their way of saying, we have no choice but to go.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: The rest of the time is necessary.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so back to why the whole site. So, yeah, whole decommissioning. This has been going on, for a long time now.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So, Duke shut down in 1990, and then site commissioning began in 1992. So, there's various hits of campus now, outside the rural fences, already being,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: already been to admission for a long time, the building's got a nice, shiny new ones built. At some point in the 2000s, UK AAA headquarters moved from the Harwell HQ building to color.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: And there's actually a nice series of documents here, so the Nuclear Restoration Services site group has a, six-monthly meeting where they report on progress and how these different things are going, what things are being, demolished, and all this kind of things.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: But yeah, so whole campus, well, whole Oxford, whole international business center, then whole Oxford, then whole campus, joint venture between SDSC, UKEA, and private partners then manages the Eastland.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So they did a press release, a few days ago saying what they're gonna do at the different places, which has got some fun stuff, and then there's gonna be a hotel, it's gonna be a playground.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Is there a museum, so… This is a center. This is a center. Wow.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: We will see, I guess. But yeah, that's the…
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: That's the demolition of one of the most recent buildings, that's, Radiochemical Facility 2024, I think.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Okay, so that brings me neatly to the end of my seminar. So, there's lots of stuff I have not covered.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: So the MRC whole unit, radiobiology, mice, things like that, have not covered the atomic spies class books. Someone else whose name's Gatesman and Bruno Pontikovo, who defected to Moscow.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Haven't covered National Radio… Radiological Protection Board, so the rather bleak-looking building, UK HSA building, and I haven't covered anything about the sectors of it, I haven't covered bulbs, computing, lasers, space, you name it, I haven't covered that,
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Any questions?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Well, you've demonstrated the importance of the President's lunch. Have you got any similar suggestions for dealing with the current crisis?
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: Whoa.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: You don't have to answer that. Yeah. Well, I think the university about that. Yeah.
STFC-RAL-CR03 R61: I see we're coming up to yourself, recording.