John Hallam Friends of the Earth Sydney, 17 Lord Street, Newtown, NSW, Australia, 2042 Fax (61)(2)9517-3902 ph (61)(2)9517-3903 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://homepages.tig.com.au/~foesyd WILL THE ARGENTINE REACTOR BE A LEMON? An anonymous engineering assessment of the research reactor built by ANSTO's preferred tenderer, argentine firm INVAP, in Egypt, indicates that the Egyptian machine may be a lemon, and casts doubt on whether the INVAP reactor will be able to fulfill the demands of Australia's research community. The asessment was delivered to Sutherland councillor Genivieve Rankin in a brown paper bag. Its data on the Egyptian reactors capabilities are consistent with data published by INVAP on their website. A question was asked today in the Senate by Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja, on costing and project detail of the Lucas heights reactor. The anonymous documents assessments of the ETRR-2 reactor in Egypt, the only large research reactor built by ANSTO's favored tenderer, INVAP of Argentina, are damning. INVAP has built research reactors in Argentina, Peru, Egypt, and Algeria. The ETRR-2 Egyptian reactor dates from 1997. According to the engineering assessment: --The reactor is designed as a 1960s style test reactor, and is not suitable for use as a high- quality source of neutrons for research purposes. --The reactor is not designed to accommodate cold or hot neutron sources, deemed to be essential by the research community and consistently advocated by ANSTO as what was needed for a new reactor. --The reactor has no containment whatsoever, and no other means of accident limitation. --The leaktightness of the reactor pool is suspect. In addition, according to the document, the ETRR-2 seems to have been quite useless to the Egyptian research community. Laboratories and offices have lain vacant and the reactor has reportedly been used for only ten days in three years. According to FOE nuclear campaigner John Hallam, "If the replacement for HIFAR in any way resembles ETRR-2, what we will have is a machine that is neither safe, nor in any way answers the needs of Australia's research community, which ANSTO has always argued is, along with the ability to supply medical isotopes, the entire justification for a new reactor." "During the EIS process, FOE argued that even if we spent $500-600m on a state of the art machine with 8 cold sources, and 4 hot sources, we'd be no more than number 11-13 in the neutron scattering field. With the INVAP machine, (Unless the government can show otherwise) we will have nothing resembling a state of the art neutron scattering source. Unless the government can release the full technical details as we have demanded over and over again, to public scrutiny, there is no reason for anyone to believe that we have anything at Lucas heights but an unsafe device to cause taxpayers money that would be better spent on almost anything else, to disappear." "There is not, and never was, any justification in terms of science from a replacement reactor. Its time the government acknowledged that and canceled this wasteful and unsafe project. We need a full inquiry into the cost, capabilties, and full technical details of this project now." Contact: John Hallam 9517-3903 h9810-2598 -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
