Government confirms funding for SRS at Daresbury

The government today announced that the Synchrotron Radiation Source at the CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory in Cheshire will be funded until December 2008. This, with other investments at the Daresbury site, bode well for the future development of the Daresbury campus.

Lord Sainsbury, DTI Minister for Science and Innovation, said:
"Daresbury and its staff have a fine record of achievement, and I am convinced that there is a real future for world-class science and innovation on the site, with all the associated opportunities."

Professor Colin Whitehouse, Director Daresbury Laboratory, said:
"The SRS has been a key part of the UK's research toolkit for 25 years. I'm delighted we've got funding to keep it open until the end of 2008."

However, he was keen to emphasise that there's more to Daresbury than just the SRS.
"The Laboratory is home to many other important projects such as Europe's most powerful academic research supercomputer and we're leading the way for UK participation in particle accelerator projects on the world stage," he said, "And our scientists, engineers and support staff are world-class. We're looking to build on their key skills to help us capitalise on exciting new opportunities for the Laboratory, such as contributing to big international projects to probe the innermost secrets of atoms. I'm very confident about the future."

Professor Whitehouse has also been working to develop the Daresbury International Science and Technology Park with the North West Development Agency, local universities, especially those of Manchester, Liverpool and Lancaster, and local industry to generate and attract high-tech businesses.
"The science and technology base in the Northwest is very strong," he explained. "This combination of major university research centres, multinational companies and a world-renowned scientific research centre like the Daresbury Laboratory with its wealth of expertise provide the very powerful regional ingredients for an exciting future."

The SRS, which was a world first for the UK and celebrates its 25th year of operations this year, will be switched off at the end of 2008, bringing an illustrious era of scientific discoveries to a close as the new third generation light source, Diamond, comes on stream to ensure that the UK has a world-beating machine for the immediate future.

Looking to the long term future, however, scientists at Daresbury are already working on an Energy Recovery Linac project as a precursor to a Fourth Generation Light Source (4GLS). The unique expertise of the Daresbury staff will be necessary to deliver 4GLS, which represents a revolution in accelerator design. It will help develop the next generation of computers, medicines and catalysts by allowing scientists to study how atoms and molecules move within a thousandth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. Initial progress is encouraging as the project has already passed through several review stages which released £14m government and CCLRC funding. Additional funding of £1.6m has also just been allocated to the project over the next two years by CCLRC to bring forward the date on which the final design plans for 4GLS will be available allowing a decision to be made about the funding for the new source.

Notes for editors

1. Daresbury Laboratory was established in 1962. It was initially set up to house an accelerator for particle physics research. Daresbury Laboratory had already been experimenting with using beams of light - synchrotron radiation - emitted as a by-product of its particle accelerator's operation. When this particle accelerator closed, Daresbury Laboratory staff built the world's first machine dedicated to producing this light, the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS). There are now 60 such machines operating around the world.
   
   
2. The SRS at Daresbury Laboratory was the world's first and is still the UK's only machine of its kind. It is a particle accelerator 96 m in circumference which accelerates electrons to near light speed. By making the electrons move in a circular path, it forces them to emit beams of light. These light beams can be finely focused and are very powerful. Unlike a laser, which has just one wavelength of light, the light from the SRS contains a broad range of wavelengths, from the infrared, through visible and ultraviolet, down to X-rays.
   
   
3. This light is used to advance research in many areas and many familiar products have benefited from it. Cadbury's have used it to improve the quality of their chocolate. Unilever have used it to develop better shampoos, detergents and ice-cream. It has helped develop new clothing fabrics, better toothpaste and improve the wrappers on crisps and confectionery. It also played a key part in helping Sir John Walker, then of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, win a share in the 1997 Nobel prize for Chemistry for solving the structure of an enzyme called F1-ATPase. This enzyme makes ATP, which fuels the reactions that power all living things.
   
   
4. 4GLS is a unique facility that will produce very short pulses of extremely high brightness light over a million, million, million, million times brighter than an ordinary light bulb. The peak power is roughly equivalent to lighting every home in London. It will enable researchers to study molecules on the incredibly short timescales in which they work, for example to follow chemical reactions as they happen, to look at unstable clusters of atoms and even examine the spin of electrons. Because 4GLS produces high intensity, low-energy light, it can even be used to look at processes within living cells without destroying them and to measure the interactions of cells with potential new medicines. This means that scientists will be able to study how drugs kill diseased cells. The research carried out on 4GLS will also help develop the next generation of computer memories, medicines and catalysts for the chemical and car industries. The 4GLS design concept, developed by Daresbury staff, is truly revolutionary - the light is produced by a combination of two new technologies, energy recovery linac (ERL) and free electron lasers (FELs), which together result in light over a million times more intense than the most modern synchrotron sources. When built, 4GLS will be the most advanced light source in the world.

For more information please contact:

Tony Buckley, CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory Press Officer

Tel: 01925 603272
Cell: 07799 767603
a.g.buckley@cclrc.ac.uk

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