By John Hallam
Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Movement Against Uranium Mining, the Sutherland Environment Centre, the Lucas Heights Study Group and the Sutherland Shire Council are opposed to a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights.
The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) has been lobbying for a new reactor at Lucas Heights since the late 1970s.
A review in 1985 concluded that ANSTO did not need a new reactor. However, a later review by the Australian Science and Technology Council concluded that a new reactor for ANSTO was a priority. This review was sketchy in the extreme, and included no detailed costing or proper cost-benefit analysis.
ANSTO's lobbying came to a head late in 1992, just after new legislation made it immune to state-based environmental requirements. On September 30, the government announced a review, divided into three parts: the need for a new reactor; safety and decommissioning issues associated with the existing (HIFAR) reactor; siting issues associated with a new reactor.
The "Research Reactor Review" began in November. The first round of submissions opened in November and closed in December. There was indignation at this, with Sutherland Shire lobbying for a June '93 cut-off. The review then extended the deadline to February, and a second round of submissions was called for afterwards, with a deadline of May 14. Three hundred and fifty-five first-round submissions were received by the February 19 deadline.
Friends of the Earth Melbourne put in an initial submission, while FOE Sydney put in a 30-page supplementary submission just a week after the deadline. The Sutherland Shire Council is three weeks late with what will most likely be a massive second-
round submission. The state government put in a miserable seven-page submission that says very little.
Other noteworthy submissions include those of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which strongly backs a new reactor.
The Lucas Heights reactor was offered to Australia in 1954 as a sop to the Menzies government for permitting the testing of British nuclear weapons.
It is a DIDO-type reactor identical to the DIDO and Pluto reactors at Harwell in the UK (now closed down). It has a number of technical peculiarities, notably a cooling system for its biological shield that has been incurably leaky since the time it was first commissioned, and a strange reactivity control system. There is some concern over the reliability of this system, and ANSTO itself has done analyses of an accident in which reactor power could soar from the design power of 10 Mw to 150 Mw.
HIFAR was initially used for research related to Australia's ambitions for power reactors and even weapons, with much of the early research going into the development of a reactor for use in the Australian desert.
HIFAR and ANSTO are left high and dry by the decisions of successive governments not to have either a weapons or a power reactor program. All that is really left HIFAR is the production of medical and industrial isotopes, and the use of its neutrons for "neutron scattering'.
The problem is that HIFAR isn't well suited to neutron scattering research, which involves the use of relatively slow-moving neutrons to penetrate materials and examine their internal structure. HIFAR has a number of "beam ports" that radiate directly out from the reactor core. This means that, as well as the relatively slow-moving "thermal" neutrons needed for neutron scattering research, a lot of "fast" neutrons and gamma rays come out of the reactor. Many newer research reactors have "tangential" beam ports to eliminate this background.
ANSTO would like to construct a completely new reactor of the same thermal power as the current HIFAR, but with three times the neutron flux, tangential beam ports and a both "hot" and "cold"
neutron sources.
ANSTO estimates that this would cost about $150 million. However, this estimate is about half what it costs to construct a similar reactor overseas, and is arrived at by subtracting from the overall cost everything that can be made in Australia.
The real cost of a new research reactor would be between $300 and $400 million — much larger than any other single item on Australia's rather limited R&D budget.
A new reactor of this sort wouldn't put us in the forefront of neutron scattering research anyway. ANSTO's own figures show that in terms of neutron flux we would be equal 11th or 12th.
Is it really worthwhile spending $300-400 million just to be 11th or 12th in the world neutron scattering stakes? When ANSTO was examined on the industrial applications of neutron scattering, it was able to point to very few applications, and Australian industry is certainly not queuing up to use the HIFAR neutron scattering facility — nor to use any of the much trendier overseas facilities.
In fact, the real "cutting edge" research these days doesn't happen on reactors at all, but on various exotic accelerator facilities — which ANSTO has, and would still have if HIFAR were closed down tomorrow and not replaced.
The other justification for a reactor of some kind at Lucas Heights is the production of medical and industrial radioisotopes. The most commonly used medical isotope is technetium-99m.
In spite of ANSTO's insistence that this isotope can be produced only in a reactor, it can in fact be produced in a cyclotron. Even a very large new Tc-99m-producing cyclotron would cost about a fifth as much as a reactor.
Other medical isotopes can either be produced on cyclotrons too, or can be imported. ANSTO itself notes in its 1993-1995/6 research program that the cutting edge of medical isotope research is in cyclotron-produced isotopes.
Meanwhile, the "old lady" at Lucas Heights has suffered since the time it was built from a number of problems with leaking thermal shield cooling coils, heat-exchanger leaks and reactor instrumentation that is connected to an "uninterruptible power supply" that has never worked.
HIFAR's brethren at Harwell were shut down in 1990, after a safety audit by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.
The potential exists for a power excursion at HIFAR via the loss of one of its oddly designed control arms. HIFAR has no proper backup shutdown system, apart from two "safety rods" placed well out of the core and able to absorb only 0.5% of the reactivity.
The review will produce an interim report in July. Meanwhile, the antinuclear campaign needs your help. We need money to pay all those photocopying, phone and fax bills that such a campaign involves.
The other thing needed right now is for people to make known their concern. We suggest that you write now to your local member and to Prime Minister Keating, saying that Australia doesn't need another nuclear reactor just to be 11th or 12th in the neutron scattering league.
[John Hallam is uranium researcher for Friends of the Earth.]