18.6.22
I last went to ANSTO in 2017 to visit Chrissie's dad, but he worked on the outside of the complex and we didn't go inside at all. Before that the last time I went was twice in the early-mid-nineties. Gordon M from the church I was going to at the time worked there and I got to go into the HIFAR (High Flux Australian Reactor) building *twice*! Once by myself and once with Hao. The reactor was shut down in 2007 (although it's still physically there).
The second reactor that was on site when I was there has also been shut down, but it's been completely removed.
ANSTO's latest reactor is OPAL - Open Pool Australian Lightwater (which even *looks* like an opal in photos). It's housed in a building with a titanium cage over it that will supposedly shred a 737 and protect the building. Unfortunately we didn't get to go in here.
So we met up at the discovery centre, then got split into two groups and went off to tour the place.
First up was the Opal Auditorium building, where we saw a couple of different models of the place and the reactor, and got a talk on the reactor and what they do there. We also got to have a look at a live feed camera that he could control to show us the interior of the reactor building. I couldn't find any photos of the models online though.
Next up we went to the molybdenum processing room where they make molybdenum-99 and technetium-99 used in medical imaging. There were people working in there which was pretty cool and they have manipulator arms that they use to do the work behind nearly a metre of glass. There was also a small canister there that he said was 3/4 tonne on a little trolley.. not sure if I misheard, but seems a little.. high.. to me. You can see the trolley in this pic
Next up was the beam room (Australian Centre for Neutron Scattering), where they divert neutron beams out of the reactor for all sorts of experiments. The instruments all have Australian animal names (which they're running out of heh).
Finally we got to go into the Antares room (Australian National Tandem Research Accelerator), which is actually housed in a building that used to house a couple of non-active reactors, so there were epic thick concrete walls. Next door was a massive pressure vessel (vacuum chamber). One of the things they use it for is carbon dating organic samples.
While we were waiting for the other group, we stared at the massive poster they had of All The Isotopes which was pretty amazing. Looked a bit like this..
The silliest thing about the visit is that there's strictly no photography (you have to leave your phone etc in the free lockers), BUT, most of the things we saw have photos freely available on the internet anyway. Dumb.
Still, it was a really interesting tour.
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