Report highlights European accelerator research
A €24.8m Horizon 2020 grant will develop new technologies to ‘ensure that future accelerators are more affordable, reliable, sustainable and better performing’.
A new and concise document has outlined the importance of particle accelerators in fields such as energy, industry and healthcare. It was conceived and edited by the University of Huddersfield, UK’s, Professor Rob Edgecock and is one of the key outcomes of a four-year, EU-funded project which aimed to ensure that European accelerator facilities lead the world.
Edgecock is a member of the International Institute for Accelerator Applications (IIAA) based at Huddersfield, where it operates the Medium Energy Ion Scattering facility (MEIS). The University was one of 40 European partners in the project named EuCARD-2, which involved more than 350 experts and resulted in a large number of innovative ideas for the use of particle accelerators.
As co-ordinator of the IIAA of EuCARD2, Edgecock initiated the project to produce a document that would be circulated to Europe’s science policy-makers. Named ‘Particle Accelerators and People’ it has now been produced and distributed.
Edgecock said: “One of its aims is to increase awareness of just how important particle accelerators already are, economically, technically and medically within Europe and the rest of the world, because most people simply don’t realise this.
“Many will have heard about the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. But they might not know, for example, that if they are receiving radiotherapy then a particle accelerator is involved in that.
“So accelerators already have a big impact on day-to-day life, especially in areas like medicine and industry.
“But we also want to show that further development is required to improve their performance and the impact they can have in existing application areas, and also to create new applications.
“Investment in particle accelerators is important and will have benefits in the future.”
