UK’s largest scientific facility to be given £500mn upgrade

The UK’s largest scientific facility, Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire, is set to receive a £500mn upgrade over the next few years, funded mainly by the government through UK Research & Innovation and the Wellcome foundation.

Diamond functions as a giant microscope. A synchrotron, housed in a circular building 730m in diameter, generates light 10bn times brighter than the sun at various wavelengths. Scientists from universities and industry use these beams to probe the structure of materials ranging from proteins to turbine blades.

UKRI said on Wednesday that it would invest an initial £81.5mn over three years to start the upgrade to Britain’s national synchrotron. It eventually plans to spend a total of about £300mn from its infrastructure fund on the project which is known as Diamond-II.

In addition, Diamond expects Wellcome, the government’s funding partner for the synchrotron, to make a substantial investment and the facility will spend some of its own capital reserves on the project. “The total investment will be slightly north of £500mn,” said Andrew Harrison, Diamond chief executive.

The initial Diamond-II investment is the largest of 23 infrastructure announcements by UKRI on Wednesday, worth £481mn from 2022 to 2025. Others include £54.7mn for the John Innes and Sainsbury centres in Norwich, £37mn for the Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements and £29mn for UK Biobank.

Separately, UKRI said it would invest £118mn in 64 universities and research organisations for “impact acceleration” — commercialising early-stage research. Oxford university, Imperial College and University College London will receive more than £6mn each.

When Diamond started operating on the Harwell science and innovation campus in 2007, it was “the shiniest, brightest synchrotron in the world”, said Harrison. Over the past 15 years more modern machines have opened around the world, so Diamond’s performance no longer stands out.

“Diamond-II will put us right back up there at the leading edge of synchrotron technology,” said Harrison. “Every aspect of the facility will be renewed.”

New optics and instrumentation will produce more stable and sharply focused beams of ultra-bright light, from X-rays to infrared, for 38 experiments stationed around Diamond’s ring. Sample preparation and data management will be transformed. The outcome will be a 70-fold increase in brightness and 100-fold improvement in data acquisition from experiments.

A study for Diamond found that the £1.2bn spent on the facility in capital expenditure and running costs over its lifetime so far had given an economic return of £1.8bn, enabling innovation in fields from drug discovery to mechanical engineering.

The upgraded facility will offer academic and industrial scientists an opportunity to look even deeper into the structure of materials. “For example, battery researchers will be able to look deep inside lithium cells as they charge and discharge,” Harrison said.

The upgrade will take several years to plan. Diamond is expected to be switched off in late 2026 and reopen as Diamond-II in early 2028. During the dark period, UK users will be able to use similar machines elsewhere, such as the European Synchrotron in Grenoble.