Accelerator could treat cancer and help generate nuclear power

EMMA (Electron Machine with Many Applications), a joint project between several UK research institutes and industrial partners, uses prototype technology that promises to pave the way for cheaper and more compact particle accelerators.

The 5m-diameter machine is the first step towards new hospital-based equipment for hadron therapy, which uses protons to destroy cancerous tumours with greater accuracy than the X-rays currently used, reducing damage to healthy tissue.

The UK’s sole existing medical accelerator at the Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology can only treat eye cancer, said EMMA’s project manager, Neil Bliss, who is based at the Science and Technology Facilities Council’s (STFC) Daresbury Laboratory.

‘Protons can also be used to cure cancer in the body but you need much higher energy to go through other tissue,’ he told The Engineer. ‘What you want to do is get the energy into the tumour and not into the good living tissue.’

EMMA combines features from two types of accelerator currently used, cyclotrons and synchrotrons, allowing beams of charged particles to be extracted at different energy levels but without the greater expense associated with synchrotrons.