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Why can't OPAL be located in a different area, away from suburban houses?

ANSTO's Lucas Heights site meets all the safety, health, environmental and other technical requirements for locating a research reactor.  On a number of occasions, such as through the Environmental Impact Statement process and during the process of obtaining a site licence for OPAL from ARPANSA, this issue of site suitability was revisited, and every study has concluded that the ANSTO Lucas Heights site is suitable for OPAL. 

One of the most vital reasons for having OPAL close to Sydney and the airport is to enable reliable delivery of radiopharmaceuticals with short half-lives to hospitals and nuclear medicine centres throughout Sydney, throughout Australia as well as for international distribution.  It also enables researchers, both from Australia and overseas, to have reasonable access to ANSTO's facilities.  As OPAL will be a state-of-the-art research facility, it is vital to be near an international airport and sited in an area with reasonable infrastructure.

At the time of the decision to construct a new research reactor (1997), the Government did give detailed consideration to the possibility of siting the reactor in technically suitable regions elsewhere in Australia.  However, aside from the requirements for radiopharmaceutical distribution and the needs of research scientists, the Government also noted that the duplication of the required infrastructure as well as the relocation of personnel to a new site would have added substantially to the cost of the project.  Costs would have been boosted further because Australia would then have been operating two nuclear sites, as the Lucas Heights site would have continued operating to produce radiopharmaceuticals from the output of the National Medical Cyclotron in Sydney and staff would still be required at HIFAR for final shutdown, monitoring and decommissioning. 

For historical reasons, the reactor is also surrounded by a 1.6 km buffer zone.  Such a buffer zone is not really required and far exceeds siting requirements for research reactors in other countries; in fact, many research reactors overseas are located within urban areas and on university campuses.  In comparison, the ANSTO reactor is well away from suburban houses.