Uses
Beams of high-energy particles are useful for both fundamental and applied research in the sciences, and also in many technical and industrial fields unrelated to fundamental research. It has been estimated that there are approximately 26,000 accelerators worldwide. Of these, only about 1% are research machines with energies above 1 GeV, while about 44% are for radiotherapy, 41% for ion implantation, 9% for industrial processing and research, and 4% for biomedical and other low-energy research. The bar graph shows the breakdown of the cumulative number of industrial accelerators according to their applications. The numbers are based on the most current statistics available from various sources, including production and sales data published in presentations or market surveys, and data provided by a number of manufacturers.
Read more about this topic: Particle Accelerator