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College Park, Maryland      June 6 - 10 , 2004

T1-D2 (8:45 AM): The Australian Replacement Research Reactor

R. A. Robinson, S. J. Kennedy (Bragg Institute, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, Australia)

The 20-MW Australian Replacement Research Reactor represents possibly the greatest single research infrastructure investment in Australia’s history. Construction of the facility has commenced, following award of the construction contract in July 2000, and the construction licence in April 2002. First fuel will go into the reactor in November 2005, with the facility at full power in early 2006 and fully commissioned in July 2006. The project includes a large state-of-the-art liquid deuterium cold-neutron source and supermirror guides feeding a large modern guide hall, in which most of the instruments are placed. Alongside the guide hall, there is good provision of laboratory, office and space for support activities. While the facility has “space” for up to 18 instruments, the project has funding for an initial set of 8 instruments, which will be ready when the reactor is fully operational. Instrument performance will be competitive with the best research-reactor facilities anywhere. Staff to lead the design effort and man these instruments have been hired on the international market from leading overseas facilities, and from within Australia, and 7 out of 8 instruments have been specified and costed. At present the instrumentation project carries > 10 % contingency and 50 % of procurements have been placed. An extensive dialogue has taken place with the Australian user community and our international peers, via various means including a series of workshops over the last 2 years covering all 8 instruments, emerging areas of application like biology and the earth sciences, and computing infrastructure for the instruments.

In December 2002, ANSTO formed the Bragg Institute, with the intent of nurturing strong external partnerships, and covering all aspects of neutron and x-ray scattering, including research using synchrotron radiation.

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