It is located at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's (ANSTO) Lucas Heights site, 40 km south-west of Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia.
The Institute was formed in December 2002 in preparation for the start-up of the Open-pool Australian lightwater reactor in 2006, and named as a tribute to the father-and-son team Sir William Henry Bragg and son William Lawrence Bragg, who were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915 for pioneering the analysis of crystal structures by means of X-rays.
Following a restructure of scientific operations in 2016, the Institute was split to form two distinct research platforms, ACNS and the National Deuteration Facility.
[2] Neutron scattering covers an extremely wide range of disciplines from fundamental physics, through chemistry, materials, and biology, right through to interdisciplinary areas such as engineering and archaeology.
Access to the neutron instrumentation at the ACNS is available to all qualified applications through either proprietary fee-for-service research, non-proprietary peer reviewed merit access, non-proprietary peer reviewed research program process for 3-year programs, or fast-turnaround experiments.