Nuclear Reactors and Dust Storms

Last weekend, I went to see the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights, in the south of Sydney. I hadn't been there since I was a teenager, and when I went on that first occasion, I hardly understand a word that was said by the scientists who showed us around. This time, having read a little more about nuclear reactors, I gained a better understanding of how things work at such a place.

The research that goes on at this amazing reactor is incredibly advanced and complex, but what I grasped, this time round, filled me with admiration for the work that the scientists do here, and made me feel proud that, although it is just a small reactor, it is one of the world's most advanced and scientifically productive, with scientists visiting from all around the world to perform their experiments.

The reactor I saw as a teenager is now over fifty years old and is being decommissioned. As one of the world's first reactors, its decommissioning is being watched with great interest by scientists in other countries to see how the process is done. The reactor I saw in the weekend is brand, spanking new. It is an open pool research reactor and holds a mere 250 grams of nuclear material at any one time. With this minute quantity of uranium, all the research into materials engineering, biochemistry research, pharmaceutical production, silicon chip irradiation, waste handling and environmental testing can be performed. There are two neutron scattering test beds, a nuclear accelerator and the open pool reactor itself.

The reactor is housed in a big cylindrical tank, about six metres high. It is open at the top, with a bridge spanning across it. Scientists stand on the bridge and hang over the top of the open pool with "fishing rods" and put things into the reactor to be bombarded with neutrons. As you can see, I have only a very basic idea of what they actually do, hanging over the reactor. I was surprised that they could do this safely. They wouldn't want to fall in! However, maybe, with only 250 grams of uranium, it wouldn't matter if they did fall in, as long as they got out quickly.

All of that happened last Saturday, and then four days later, something very strange occurred... something I have never experienced before. I woke up yesterday morning and noticed that it was darker than usual and there was a funny, red light outside. I got up and went to the balcony. A kookaburra was sitting on our deck, looking very puzzled. The whole sky was filled with red mist. It looked like the Devil's Morning! The birds were quiet and still. None of them wanted to fly around, as they normally would in the early morning. I took some photos, shown on the right hand side of this page, as I knew I would probably never see anything like this again.

A radio announcer said that a dust storm had blown in overnight from the Red Centre, bringing over a million tons of fertile topsoil from the desert and the outback farms. The dust was just the colour of Ayres Rock (Uluru), one and a half thousand kilometres to the west. For the global warming alarmists, no, it had nothing to do with climate change! It is a rare event, but it does happen as a normal part of nature, the previous dust storm occurring in the 1940's.

During the day, a very strong gale arrived and blew the dust northwards. By the late afternoon, the sky became blue again. Sydney Airport, which had been closed all day, was able to re-open, and as the dust reached Queensland, Brisbane Airport was closed down! Last night, thirteen hours after I had awoken to the Devil's Morning, I looked up and saw a beautiful, bright crescent moon hanging in the clear, dark sky. It was as though nothing strange had ever happened.