How Much Do You Even Know About Lucas Heights?
Anthony Fordham
at 09:57 AM May 31 2013
How Much Do You Even Know About Lucas Heights?
Not actually a power station
ANSTO
Energy // 

After nearly 50 years of service, Australia's first reactor, called HIFAR (the High Flux Australian Reactor) was turned off in 2006. Now, we have a newer and more technically sophisticated reactor called OPAL - the Open Pool Australian Lightwater reactor.Google it and you'll find a series of newspaper articles carrying on about water leaks and organisational politics, and not so much about what the reactor actually does.

The general rule seems to be this: if you don't know OPAL's capabilities and intent, you're against Australia having "nuclear power". If you DO know what OPAL is all about, you tend to agree that - not letting up on the safety at all - it's probably a good tool to have in the country's box of tricks. So let's recap:

1. It's not actually a power reactor

This is one of those know-it-or-you-don't things, but OPAL is a research reactor. If it was a power station, it would produce a miserly 20 megawatts (Chernobyl was an 8000 megawatt reactor). It's used to "transmute" substances by bombarding them with neutrons, and to send some of those neutrons down a tube to a hall full of scientific instruments. Universities and others can book time on the equipment to do experiments in everything from elemental physics to the science of food spoilage. The elements produced by the radioactive decay of its uranium fuel are also used.

2. The core is absolutely tiny

OPAL is a uranium fission reactor, but its core is something like 33,000 times smaller than the core at Chernobyl (note its thermal output isn't 33,000 time smaller though - it's an inherently better design than the Generation II Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy type reactors the USSR used... actually, which Russia still uses. Eep). OPAL's core contains only about 33 kilograms of uranium in 16 "fuel assemblies". The core is no bigger than a wheelie bin.

3. It's actually not that radioactive

Okay, strictly speaking, it's pretty radioactive since there's a sustained fission reaction going on in the core, but compared to high-yield power reactors, OPAL contains much less uranium-235, what's called "enriched" uranium. U-235 can be used in nuclear weapons, the less-radioactive uranium-238 can't. OPAL is a champion for a switch to "Low Enriched Uranium" in nuclear power and research.

4. It makes medicine

As part of a Federal Government requirement that facilities like the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation generate 30% of their own funding, OPAL is used to make radiopharmaceuticals for imaging disease (such as in a PET scanner) or for treating a wide range of cancers. OPAL makes several different products that are hugely in demand around the world.

5. The world needs it

OPAL holds records for "availability", such as in 2010 when it ran for 286 days (not in a row) at power. Generally it runs for 28 days, then stops for two days to shuffle the fuel. When OPAL needed an eight-week refit to stop water leaking INTO (not out of) its heavy water neutron reflector, the worldwide supply of radiopharmaceuticals had to be rationed.

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