Heather on her visit to OPAL. The steel cage that is intended to protect the reactor from aircraft impacts, is visible in the background.

Credit: Katynna Gill

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Lost at first sight

I arrived at the reactor site to find myself surrounded by a scene not unlike some of the more remote stretches of Tasmania. Stepping out into the heath-filled landscape I noticed tiny flowers and a cavalcade of insects. Surely there were endangered species thriving in this untouched island, marooned in the vastness of Sydney southern suburbia.

ANSTO describe the radiation produced by the reactor's airborne emissions as 0.004 milliseverts per year (recommended international safety standards are less than one millisevert annually). Whatever the dosage, I certainly wasn't getting any closer to the kind of radiation I was seeking here.

Entering the facility itself was a lot like visiting a maximum security prison, except that the staff is better dressed. Cameras and phones are kept in lockers at reception. There's also a lot of police around; the Australian Federal Police have a station at the site. Barring security, the site could also be compared to a well endowed university campus, with café, athletic centre (with a pool), and manicured grounds.

I met with ANSTO science communicator Katynna Gill and she let me down gently. Sadly, the core wasn't running at full power, so no blue glow.

Twinkle-eyed children

Despite this disappointment, I was keen to get as close to the core as possible and she was happy to comply. We then embarked on an in-depth tour of the reactor building, guide hall and offices, stopping only to play with the models outside the reactor building and various devices developed for school education.

Interacting with the community is a big interest of ANSTO and several times during the tour we threaded our way through groups of twinkle-eyed children and grandparents. Their guides, Gill explained, were often ex-staff members who would continue to be involved with the organisation by taking interested people around the site. School groups came daily, but I was surprised by just how many members of the public thought a trip to the reactor would be just the thing to do on a rainy Wednesday.

From the outside, the reactor building looks like a squat, geometrical modern mansion that some architect has decided would look great beneath a steel cage.

In fact, INVAP S.E., the Argentinean company that built the reactor, had a good reason for adding this feature. The building was commissioned in 2000 but work did not begin until after the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) issued a licence to construct the reactor in April 2002, seven months after U.S. airliners were hijacked and flown into buildings on September 11, 2001. The cage is intended to protect against a full-scale impact by aircraft.

Glimpse of the core

Finally inside, I toured the area in company with OPAL reactor manager Tony Irwin. The microwave-sized core is housed in a 14-metre-deep cylindrical pool of pure water, which acts to absorb neutrons escaping from fission.

Like the rain, circumstances were again against me, with work being carried out in the room directly surrounding the core. I could see the suited men in action through the window, but I couldn't get close enough to peer into the pool and see for myself the process that has the potential for everything from revolutionising medicine to generating energy.

Taking pity, Irwin introduced me to a camera viewing system that zooms into the deep reactor pool. I may have only seen de-mineralised water, or the paint on the concrete sides of the reactor pool, but finally I had my glimpse under the magician's table at the core of a nuclear reactor, sitting innocuously in a circular steel well that shed a faint blue light.

It wasn't even close to peering into the spectacular furnace of nuclear energy of an atomic bomb, nor was it like stepping firmly to one side of the nuclear debate. But coming close to the core of a nuclear reactor is still an experience engraved in my memory – even if, like an elusive comet or the feeling you get after Christmas, it didn't burn quite as brightly as I'd hoped.

Read the full story about OPAL in the April/May print issue of Cosmos available in stores now – or alternatively subscribe here.

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