Synchrotron radiation sources in Brazil

The development of synchrotron radiation sources in Brazil is described from a brief historical point of view followed by a description of the Sirius project, a new 3 GeV fourth-generation synchrotron light source with 518 m circumference and 0.25 nm.rad emittance, in final construction stage at the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory campus, in Campinas. As one of the pioneer fourth-generation machines, many accelerator engineering challenges were studied in depth and resulted in quite a few innovative developments. In this paper, we review some of these developments. This article is part of the theme issue 'Fifty years of synchrotron science: achievements and opportunities'.