Happy New Year to our users and collaborators! And we look forward to serving you and collaborating with you in 2012. Many big new things will occur in 2012: specifically, we expect to make the following substantial new strides:
Towards the end of 2012, OPAL will take a long shutdown to allow installation of the in-pile components for the CG-2 split guide that feeds the new BILBY time-of-flight SANS instrument. This shutdown will commence no earlier than November 1st, but it could consume all of November and December.
The reactor operating schedule for late-2012 is not yet issued, but there will likely be at least 100 beam days between 1st July and 31st October. These beam days will be available to the current proposal round that closes on 15th March 2012, and which will be assessed by the Program Advisory Committee meeting on 10-11 May 2012.
Also, by year's end, we expect the new OPAL office building on the south side of the reactor to be essentially complete, and ready for occupation in early 2013. The Institute, will then move approximately 50 of our staff there, in order to move all personnel out of the cabins in the Neutron Guide Hall, and free them up for the four extra instruments that will come on line in 2013.
In fact, all major components for the BILBY, DINGO, EMU and KOOKABURRA instruments should on site by the end of 2012.
In the more immediate term, our PELICAN time-of-flight spectrometer should perform its first user experiments, and the Taiwan-funded SIKA cold 3-axis spectrometer should have accepted its first neutrons.
The ARC-funded beryllium-filter option on TAIPAN, should also have accepted neutrons.
And looking further out into the future, in April 2012, we are hosting a large international workshop directed at making the case for, and analysing the scientific and technical opportunities to realise, a second guide hall at the OPAL reactor.
Once built, this would bring the number of neutron beam instruments up to 30 or more. In addition, the Institute is involved in the organisation of the following meetings during the coming year:
10 - 12 January 2012, Current State and Future of Neutron Stress Diffractometers, ANSTO
16 - 18 April 2012, Workshop on Second Guide Hall for OPAL, ANSTO
17 - 20 September 2012, Sample Environment at Neutron Scattering Facilities, Amora Hotel Jamison, Sydney
18 - 23 November 2012, 2012 International Conference on Small-Angle Scattering (SAS2012), Sydney Convention Centre
25 - 28 November 2012, Structure and Dynamics of Condensed Matter by Scattering Methods Workshop (in celebration of Professor John W. White's 75th birthday), Hunter Valley (just north of Sydney)
6 December 2012,Bragg Symposium - Celebrating 100 Years of Crystallography, Adelaide
Published: 01/01/2012