external exposure facility SNAKE Paul Schofield website SNAKE (Superconducting Nanoprobe for Applied nuclear (Kern) physics Experiments) is the ion microbeam installed at the 14 MV Tandem Accelerator in Garching, achieving sub-micrometer beam focusing via a superconducting quadrupole doublet over a broad ion range from 20 MeV protons to 200 MeV gold ions, with LET values from 2–2000 keV/μm. The facility allows targeted irradiation of single defined cells and more complex samples with single or counted ions, supporting LET-dependent intercomparison studies and live-cell imaging of DNA double-strand break repair kinetics. It is used exclusively for joint research collaborations (approximately 3–6 beam times per year), with biological security class S1 required. Located at Maier-Leibnitz-Laboratory (MLL). Hauptner et al. 2004, Radiat Environ Biophys 42:237-245