Catalogue description United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority: Atomic Energy Establishment, Winfrith: Dragon Project, Correspondence and Papers

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Details of AB 32
Reference: AB 32
Title: United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority: Atomic Energy Establishment, Winfrith: Dragon Project, Correspondence and Papers
Description:

This series contains papers on all aspects of the Dragon project based at Winfrith. The project was sponsored by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and was to produce a prototype high temperature reactor.

AB 32/11 contains an account of the project, 'The OECD Dragon Project' by C A Rennie (dated 11 September 1963).

AB 32/122-1145 are Dragon Project (DP) reports. There are indexes to the reports at pieces 122 and 606-608.
Date: 1959-1984
Related material:

Records from the collaborative research programme with Harwell are in AB 62

For records relating to the Dragon project, see AB 56

Records of the scientific and technical administration, Northern Groups are in AB 65
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Physical description: 1148 files and volumes
Access conditions: Open
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 1993 United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
Accruals: Series is accruing
Publication note:

For a detailed history and description of the project, see E N Shaw, Europe's Nuclear Power Experiment: History of the OECD Dragon Project( Pergamon Press, 1983)
Administrative / biographical background:

In early 1958 a committee was set up by the European Nuclear Energy Agency to examine methods of collaboration among countries of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) on experimental and prototype reactors. Eventually, this resulted in the OEEC High Temperature Reactor Project, usually known as the DRAGON Project, for which an agreement was signed in April 1959 by representives of 12 countries: Austria, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, the Euratom countries (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and Germany) and the UK.

The main objectives of the project were to carry out a programme of research and development work in the field of high-temperature gas-cooled reactors; and to design, construct and operate a reactor experiment of this type.

The UK was heavily involved in this project. DRAGON was sited at Winfrith: the UK contributed nearly 8 million pounds of the initial budget of 13.6 million; the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority acted as the project's legal agent; and half of the staff in the project's main divisions - Research and Development and Engineering - were from the UK.

The DRAGON Agreement was initially for five years, but it was subsequently extended, and terminated in 1976.

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