ANSTO has begun building equipment for a $20 million radioisotopes production facility it will construct in Thailand. The facility, at Ongkharak, 65 km north-east of Bangkok, will make Thailand substantially self-sufficient in nuclear medicines and in the radioactive sources used in industrial radiography.
ANSTO is a sub-contractor to and supported the United States-based company, General Atomics, in its successful bid to win the prime contract with Thailands Office of Atomic Energy for Peace to build a new nuclear research facility at Ongkharek.
The overall contract calls for the building of a new 10 Megawatt swimming pool type research reactor, radioisotope production facility and waste management and storage facilities. All are being built on a green field site.
The work is to be completed in four years. ANSTOs part of the contract calls for it to design, construct and commission a facility that will produce mainstream nuclear medicines and other radioisotopes for Thailands consumption.
ANSTO will be supplying equipment and process facilities for the manufacture of radiopharmaceuticals primarily based on the radioisotopes iodine-131, iodine-125, phosphorous-32 and technetium-99m.
Equipment and facilities will also be provided for the production of the key industrial isotope iridium- 192 in various forms.
ANSTOs Engineering Division is designing, building and equipping 23 heavily shielded hot cells in which radioactive materials can be handled. It will also supply three clean rooms and fit out a quality control laboratory to support radiopharmaceutical production.
Further, it will provide all the equipment needed for the irradiation of silicon in Thailands new research reactor. Neutron transmutation doping of silicon in research reactors is used to produce high quality components for the electronics industry.
ANSTO expects to use mainly Australian resources to fulfil the contract. Most of the manufacturing will be done at ANSTO in its engineering workshops at Lucas Heights, or by sub-contractors. The only exceptions to Australian sourcing are expected to be some instruments.
The Executive Director of ANSTO, Professor Helen Garnett, said the $20 million assignment was the largest ever won by ANSTO.
She described it as a tribute to the expertise and experience developed by the Organisations Engineering Division, which will carry out the task, and its radiopharmaceuticals operations unit, which will provide production expertise.
"Engineering has provided high quality infrastructure support to all of ANSTOs activities since the first sod was turned at Lucas Heights more than 40 years ago".
"In the fierce bidding for this contract, the General Atomics team competed with all the major players from around the world. We won because of our collective experience and expertise," she said.
The other members of the team are ATT of Thailand to design and project manage the construction of the buildings, and Marubeni and Hitachi of Japan to build the waste management and storage facility.
The awarding of the prime contract to General Atomics concluded a process that began in 1993. General Atomics, which is based in San Diego in California, has built 65 of its TRIGA research reactors in 25 countries. In 1993, it approached ANSTO and asked whether it would be prepared to act as specialist sub-contractor when it was pursuing large opportunities.
Along with six others, the General Atomics consortiums bid was submitted in December, 1995. Although informed the following April they were the preferred bidder, discussions also continued with
two other bidders.
Several more rounds of detailed discussion continued through 1996 and early 1997 before the Thai Cabinet gave its approval for the contract to proceed with the General Atomics bid.
ANSTOs Engineering Division is formally Quality Accredited, initially gaining International Standards Organisations ISO 9001 accreditation in 1993, then demonstrating compliance to a more demanding standard in 1995.
ANSTOs radiopharmaceuticals production area has ISO 9002 quality accreditation; its research reactor operations management holds ISO 9001 quality accreditation.
Published: 11/05/1998