VELA: A new accelerator technology development platform for industry

Copyright © 2014 CC-BY-3.0 and by the respective authors. The Versatile Electron Linear Accelerator (VELA) facility will provide enabling infrastructures targeted at the development and testing of novel and compact accelerator technologies, specifically through partnership with industry and aimed at addressing applications in medicine, health, security, energy and industrial processing. The facility has now been commissioned at Daresbury Laboratory and the facility is now being actively utilised by industrial groups who are able to take advantage of the variable electron beam parameters available on VELA to either demonstrate new techniques and/or processes or otherwise develop new technologies for future commercial realisation. Examples of which to be presented include; demonstration of a new cargo scanning process, characterisation of novel, high performance beam position monitors, as well as other technology development applications.