Neutrons Down Under: OPAL

Mohana Yethiraj Bragg Institute, ANSTO.

AustraliaÕs HIFAR reactor initiated its final shutdown January 30, 2007.Ê During the past 7 years, a replacement reactor, OPAL, has been under construction and is ready to take up the baton.Ê This new 20MW reactor, which first reached full power on Nov 3, 2006, is a multipurpose research reactor designed to provide irradiations, medical isotopes, and scattering facilities.Ê This talk will focus mostly on the plans and progress of this latter function.Ê Besides increasing the thermal flux by at least a factor of four, the new reactor sports a cold source, feeding state of the art longer wavelength instruments, something not available at HIFAR.Ê The cold source is expected to come on line early this year.Ê The first suite of 9 instruments are well on their way with two powder instruments having already entered commissioning phase.Ê A number of second wave instruments are already under consideration and include a USANS, a high resolution back scattering spectrometer, and neutron radiography station.Ê There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

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