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Harwell International Business Centre
Rutherford Appleton Laboratories

  
http://www.harwell.org.uk
http://www.ukaea.org.uk 		  http://www.cclrc.ac.uk  
The Harwell International Business Centre (HIBC), occupying 500 acres on the eastern borders of East Hendred, part of it being inside the Parish Boundary. It is owned by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), itself headquartered at Harwell. UKAEA's mission for the 21st Century is to restore its environment by decommissioning redundant nuclear reactors and facilities at Harwell and at its other UK sites.  The Harwell site is occupied by a number of companies, many of which grew out of the original UKAEA workforce, and are now separate plcs and limited companies.  HIBC provides jobs for around 2,500 people but adjacent to it are the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Medical Research Council (MRC) and National Radiological Protection Board (NRB), altogether providing employment for over 4,000 scientists, engineers and support staff on the 750-acre former airfield.
     
About half of the boundary fence of HIBC abuts the Hendred Estate and the three parishes of East Hendred, Harwell and Chilton have boundaries meeting on the campus.  For this reason UKAEA provides a community forum, known as the Harwell Local Liaison Committee, to give information, present reports and take note of the views of its local community.

 

 HIBC is poised for expansion, following a long rundown of jobs from 5,500 in the late 1970s to half that figure in the late 90s.  The Oxford Innovation Trust's latest (7th), and largest, Innovation Centre, was opened in May 2000 with a potential of creating 200 jobs among 50+ small start-up companies.  Hopefully some of these will grow to medium-sized companies within ten years creating 1000 jobs.  
Also sharing the campus are RAL, NRPB, MRC, UK Nirex, a shopping centre, two creches, a nursery school and junior school.

RAL has been chosen as the site to house Europe's next generation of high energy accelerators and work is due to start building a £500 million machine that will provide over 200 extra jobs.

 The following companies are located at Harwell: UKAEA, AEA Technology plc, Johnson Controls, Nycomed Amersham plc, Harwell Dosimeters, Oxford Drying services, Reviss Services UK, RGIT Ltd, Ebis (Harwell) Ltd, NNC Ltd, XiMed Group plc, National Power plc.  

 

 Typical of the work carried out at Harwell is:  nuclear consultancy, decommissioning and radioactive waste handling; irradiation and sterilisation of medical equipment and products using gamma and other high-energy irradiation sources; software development, IT, consultancy and advice and a range of other high-tech services.
Harwell International Business Centre had its first tenant company, MRC, in 1947.  Just over 50 years later it has the potential to become the largest science park in Europe.
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