In the 1990s demand for government-led research had significantly decreased and the site was subsequently gradually diversified to allow private investment, and was known from 2006 as the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus.

In 1945 John Cockcroft was asked to set up a research laboratory to further the use of nuclear fission for both military purposes and generating energy.

It had been decided that an RAF airfield would be chosen, the aircraft hangars being ideal to house the large atomic piles that would need to be built.

The early laboratory had several specialist divisions: Chemistry (initially headed by Egon Bretscher, later by Robert Spence, General Physics (H.W.B.

The decision to site AERE at Harwell had huge implications for a rural area which had depended mainly on agriculture for employment before World War II.

[citation needed] The remote nature of the Harwell site required AERE workers to be transported by shuttle bus.

GLEEP (Graphite Low Energy Experimental Pile) was a low-power (3 kilowatt) graphite-moderated air-cooled reactor.

LIDO was an enriched uranium thermal swimming pool reactor which operated from 1956 to 1972 and was mainly used for shielding and nuclear physics experiments.

A pair of larger 26 MW reactors, DIDO and PLUTO, which used enriched uranium with a heavy water moderator came online in 1956 and 1957 respectively.

In 1968 the project was shut down, as it was believed that no further progress could be made with the kind of design that ZETA represented (see Timeline of nuclear fusion).

During the 1970s the slowdown of the British nuclear energy program resulted in a greatly reduced demand for the kind of work being done by the UKAEA.

For example, an Operations Research Group was set up at Harwell, and developed shipping fleet scheduling software that was used to provide a service to British and overseas shipping companies[4] and oil reservoir simulation software to help in the development of the UK's North Sea oil interests.

[5] UKAEA was ordered to operate on a Trading Fund basis, i.e. to account for itself financially as though it was a private corporation, while remaining fully government owned.

The name Atomic Energy Research Establishment was dropped at the same time, and the site became known as the Harwell International Business Centre.