The Harwell Science and Innovation Campus is a 700-acre science and technology campus in Oxfordshire, England. Over 6,000 people work there in over 240 public and private sector organisations, working across sectors including Space, Clean Energy, Life Sciences and Quantum Computing. The site is outside

Didcot Didcot ( ) is a railway town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county of Oxfordshire and the Historic counties of England, historic county of Berkshire. Didcot is south of Oxford, eas ...

, about south of

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

and roughly east of

Wantage Wantage () is a historic market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, England. Although within the boundaries of the historic county of Berkshire, it has been administered as part of the Vale of White Horse district of Oxfordshire since 1974. T ...

. A large part of the site was formerly the main research establishment of the

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is a UK government research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy. It is an executive non-departmental public body of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy ...

, but it has seen a transition to its new role as a science and business park as the nuclear facilities have been decommissioned.

The campus today

Over 6,000 people work on the campus in some 240 organisations representing a multidisciplinary range of advanced scientific and technological disciplines. Major companies and organisations on the site include: * Diamond Light Source Synchrotron * The STFC * Rutherford Appleton Laboratory *

Central Laser Facility 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.

* ISIS Neutron and Muon Source Space Cluster Organisations * European Space Agency * Oxford Space Systems * RAL Space * Astroscale Life Sciences and HealthTech Organisations * Oxford Nanopore * Medical Research Council Harwell Institute * Public Health England * AMEC Foster Wheeler * Nuvia * The Rosalind Franklin Institute Energy Organisations * The Faraday Institution *

AEA Technology Ricardo-AEA Ltd, trading as Ricardo Energy & Environment, was formed on November 8, 2012, when Ricardo acquired the business, operating assets and employees engaged in the business of AEA Technology Plc (AEAT, in administration) (AEA Europe), fo ...

Jisc Jisc is a United Kingdom not-for-profit company that provides network and IT services and digital resources in support of further and higher education institutions and research as well as not-for-profits and the public sector. History T ...

*RHEA Group The National Quantum Computing Centre will also be built at Harwell Campus. The campus is owned by the UKAEA, the Science and Technology Facilities Council and Public Health England. It is managed by the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus joint venture partnership.

History

Atomic Energy Research Establishment

The northern part of the Campus was formerly the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, which was created after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

on the site of RAF Harwell. It was the main centre for atomic energy research and development in the United Kingdom from the 1940s to the 1990s, latterly being amalgamated into the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. A number of test nuclear reactors were sited on the Campus over the years. The nuclear facilities are in the hands of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. As parts of the site are decommissioned, they are delicensed and dedesignated and no longer secured hence the area "inside the fence" is gradually shrinking. It is planned that the entire site will be decommissioned by 2025. Achievements on the campus at this time included the creation of the world's first transistorised computer, CADET, in 1953 and the world's first experimental ‘fast’ reactor, ZEPHYR, was built in 1954.

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

In 1957 the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory (now the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, RAL) was established on a site immediately south of the AERE. This was followed in 1961 by the

Atlas Computer Laboratory 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 ...

, absorbed into the Rutherford in 1974. The southern site, including the RAL, became known as the Chilton/Harwell Science Campus. RAL is operated by the

Science and Technology Facilities Council The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is a United Kingdom government agency that carries out research in science and engineering, and funds UK research in areas including particle physics, nuclear physics, space science and astro ...

(STFC), and its facilities include the ISIS neutron source. In 2004, RAL Space engineered the Ptolemy instrument for the Philae lander on the European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta expedition Between 2003 and 2007 the Diamond synchrotron was constructed on the RAL site, the UK's largest scientific investment for 30 years.

Harwell International Business Centre

As the former UKAEA site was being decommissioned, a new role became necessary to maintain levels of employment in the area, building on the site's reputation for pioneering research, and ensuring that Harwell remained one of the UK's major centres for science and technology. Therefore, in 1996, it was relaunched as a

business park A business park or office park is a designated area of land in which many office buildings are grouped together. These types of developments are often located in suburban areas where land and building costs are more affordable, and are typicall ...

. One of the businesses on-site is the UKAEA spin-off company

. As well as attracting numerous other hi-tech businesses, the Harwell IBC also has numerous amenities such as a bank, post office, hairdresser, sports facilities including a

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

pitch, and its own bus station.

Creation of the Science and Innovation campus

In March 2006 the government announced plans to transform the Harwell International Business Centre into the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus. In August 2006 the government announced an investment of £26.4 million to construct new research facilities on the campus and the creation of a joint venture partnership.

European Space Agency ECSAT (Roy Gibson Building)

The European Space Agency moved into Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in May 2013. It was the first ESA base in the UK. ESA then constructed and opened the Roy Gibson Building (named after ESA's first Director General) in July 2015. The ESA facility, named

European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications The European Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications or ECSAT is a research center belonging to the European Space Agency (ESA) and located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It was created in ...

or ECSAT focuses upon three key areas: combining data and images from space to create new applications for everyday life; observations and research on climate change (the facility hosts ESA's Climate Office); and the development of novel power sources and innovative robotic technologies to explore space. Harwell Campus is now a significant part of the UK space sector and over 100 space organisations are based there including the European Space Agency, RAL Space, Satellite Applications Catapult, Astroscale and the UK Space Agency.

References

External links

Harwell Campus WebsiteResearch Sites Restoration Limited – HarwellSTFC Website Harwell Campus
{{coord , 51.58, -1.31, type:landmark_region:GB, display=title Buildings and structures in Oxfordshire Organisations based in Oxfordshire Research institutes in Oxfordshire Science parks in the United Kingdom Vale of White Horse