The HIFAR Reactor operated for the last time today. At 10.25 a.m., the Hon. Julie Bishop MP, Minister for Education, Science and Training, shown above with ANSTO Executive Director Ian Smith, initiated the final shutdown.
HIFAR originally went critical on Australia Day 1958 and was officially opened on 18 April 1958 by the then Prime Minister, Robert Menzies.
The OPAL reactor has now operated for the equivalent of 26 days at full power after reaching nominal full power (20 MW) on the 3 of November 2006. The first fuel change is scheduled for early February.
Today, we issued the first edition of the quarterly newsletter Bragg Peaks featuring news on the OPAL reactor, our instruments, people and science.
Work by our researchers has also been featured in the January edition of magazine What's New in Food Technology and Manufacturing. The article "Food Science goes Nuclear" features work done on starch and the processing of proteins, as part of ANSTO's Food Science Project. The full reference to the article is What's New in Food Technology & Manufacturing 14(6), 69-70 (Jan/Feb 2007).
One of our graduate students, John Daniels (Monash University) has been awarded this year's AINSE Gold Medal, for his research on "Relaxation and Microstructural Studies in Ferroelectrics". Much of John's work was done with neutrons at the Bragg Institute under the supervision of Andrew Studer and Mark Hagen.
Also this week, another eminent neutron scatterer, Prof. Lyndon Edwards formerly of the Open University in the UK, joined ANSTO in a leadership role, as head of ANSTO's Institute for Materials & Engineering Science