OPAL News
In the period April - June 2009, the OPAL Reactor and its cold-neutron source ran extremely well. The user program is in full swing on Echidna and Wombat, with 75% and 60% of days available used for formal user experiments since the beginning of 2009, and it has commenced on Kowari, Koala and Platypus. In the third and latest call for proposals, the user program has been opened up on Quokka, Taipan (subject to getting the operating licence from our regulator) and the bio-deuteration facilities with the National Deuteration Facility (NDF), and beam time allocations have been sent out for time commencing in September.
Unfortunately, the OPAL reactor has experienced some significant scheduling difficulties in July and August, and we are still awaiting the transition to a flexible fuel management strategy, which will allow operations to adhere to a predictable calendar schedule, even if OPAL experiences unforeseen short shutdowns. In August we experienced a failure of one of two main compressors for the cold-neutron source, but we expect this to be fixed by the end of August 2009.