As outlined in July's edition of Bragg Peaks, OPAL’s cold neutron source has not operated since 8th March 2012.
As a consequence, it has now become clear that we are unlikely to see cold neutrons again before April 2013, and both QUOKKA and PLATYPUS have been withdrawn from the current proposal round that closes on September 15th.
We are therefore attempting to secure beam time for our small-angle scattering and reflectometry users at other leading overseas neutron sources.
Having said this, our 5 thermal-neutron instruments used 93% of the available beam time for user experiments, in the April-June quarter, and the OPAL reactor itself continued to perform very well during the period April to June 2012, with an overall reliability of 91% with respect to the published schedule.
Published: 24/12/2012