The DIAMOND project: an advanced light source for the UK

The DIAMOND project was formally approved in 1998 and in March 2000 a site immediately adjacent to the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford was selected. Funding of the project has been offered by three partners: the UK and French governments and the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest medical research charity. The formal Design Phase was initiated in November 2000 with scheduled completion early in 2002; a storage ring with an energy of 3 GeV, a 24 cell structure and a circumference well over 500 in has already been confirmed, together with other key parameters. Intensive lattice optimisation is under way and is described in more detail in an accompanying paper. In the present one we will give a project overview and explain key design decisions and overall progress, including the facility specification which includes a superconducting RF system. Planned beam commissioning will be in 2006.