Day to be proud of our nuclear family

THIS Australia Day marks a significant landmark in the nation's history which the Labor Party would prefer was kept under wraps.

Fifty years ago Australia entered the atomic age, with scientists at Lucas Heights switching on their newly-installed reactor - the High-Flux Australian Reactor, or HIFAR, as it was universally known - to produce the first nuclear reaction in the southern hemisphere. And despite the sprinkling of Green and Labor local municipal councils which absurdly proclaim their self-proclaimed moral superiority with ludicrous signs stating their "nuclear free" status, tens of thousands of Australians have benefited from the research facilities provided by the HIFAR facility before it was ceremonially phased out last year. Like it or not, the benefits of Australia's nuclear industries have been of far greater magnitude to individual Australians than anything delivered by any Green or Labor politician. Each year, the contributions made by those working in the fields of nuclear science and technology have delivered medical isotopes for use within Australia and throughout our region which have been of inestimable value to the sick - even when they live within those pretentious "nuclear free" streets. Just as a reminder of how far the world has come since HIFAR was activated on Australia Day, 1958, it is worth remembering that the scientists who worked on the project had to travel by steamship to the UK for training, a trip that took several weeks and that many of the technologies we take for granted today, including the computer sciences, were then in their infancy. Yet the equipment they designed worked almost flawlessly until it was decommissioned and replaced last year with the new cutting-edge facility OPAL (open-pool Australian light water reactor). OPAL operates within the Bragg Institute, named after the father and son team of Lawrence and William Bragg, Australia's first physics Nobel Prize winners. The Bragg Institute is one of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation's four research institutes and manages a number of the world's most advanced neutron scattering instruments as well as conducting research into other applications for neutron and X-ray scattering. ANSTO's ARI business unit, offers a broad range of nuclear medicines which meet the bulk of Australia's domestic needs for diagnostic materials and those of 12 Pacific and Asian countries. Among the isotopes are molybdenum-99, iodine-131, samarium and yttrium-90. The National Medical Cyclotron produces iodine-123, thallium and gallium radioisotopes. The molybdenum-99 that ANSTO produces decays to produce technetium-99m, the most commonly used diagnostic radiopharmaceutical. It also provides nuclear medicine practitioners with a technetium generator developed by ANSTO, technetium is used to diagnose heart, kidney, lung and liver conditions and some bone cancers. Other radiopharmaceutical diagnostic agents address thyroid, adrenal, lung, bone and heart conditions, and tumour and infection imaging. ARI also produces Quadramet for alleviating pain from breast and prostate cancers that have spread to the bones. Iodine-131 is used to treat thyroid cancers. ARI is also in partnership with the international Siemens group in developing a twin cyclotron for the production of materials for PET scanning. The Radiopharmaceuticals Research Institute is addressing diseases including cancer, neuro-degeneration, inflammation, heart disease, diabetes and psychosis. And, even though such organisations as Greenpeace, which claim to be devoted to the environment, have attempted to have the Lucas Heights facility closed down, it also plays an important role in Australian environmental science through the Environmental Research Institute, which monitors climate change and atmospheric pollution by accurately dating mineral samples. THE far-sighted decision to establish a nuclear industry in Australia was taken by the Liberal government of Prime Minister Robert Menzies at the height the Cold War. It was taken not with a strictly military purpose in mind, even though Australia's coal reserves ensured its energy supplies for the rest of the 20th century and beyond. There were, of course, military considerations, never realised, but the principal drivers for the development of Australia's nuclear industry were research and the nation has saved millions of dollars through the production of isotopes at the facility. Australia's involvement in nuclear science has also brought responsibilities, and the nation has had a seat on the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors since the IAEA was founded in 1957. ANSTO continues to play a significant role analysing materials for the agency as part of its international effort to detect and prevent illicit nuclear activity. While the anti-nuclear protest movement does its utmost to frighten Australians about the nuclear cycle, and the Labor Party dithers hopelessly on its hypocritical nuclear policy, ANSTO has won a global reputation as a leader in waste storage techniques though its development of ceramic and glass-ceramic waste storage with its synroc technology. The doomsayers are always the noisiest, most objectionable, and increasingly the most ignorant members of the community but they usually manage to wrest the media spotlight from the more deserving on our national day. Those who have worked for the past half century delivering the benefits of the peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology to Australia and her neighbours deserve the nation's special recognition this Saturday.