Talk:High Flux Australian Reactor

Timing error
The article says "HIFAR was permanently shut down on 30 January 2007", then says "In 2007 OPAL, a 20MW replacement reactor was commissioned" and "The two reactors ran in parallel for six months". How does that work? I've added the Contradict template — Cauterite (talk) 12:11, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

It is quite simple, as the page shows. This is the proper reference page on the website of the operators of HIFAR. Decommisioning of the HIFAR reactor commenced in 2007 and will be completed in 2018. A lengthy process. The OPAL reactor which replaced HIFAR first went critical at 11.25 pm on 12 August 2006 - before decommissioning of the HIFAR reactor started.Ltaglieri (talk) 06:20, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I can confirm that the details are correct, the commissioning of OPAL commenced in 2006 and during this commissioning it was run in parallel with HIFAR.

History
Did not Mark Oliphant design HIFAR in the late 1940s? The "hi flux" bit was a high flux of thermal neutrons, far more than was needed for a simple power reactor. No doubt it could be have been used to make Pu239, although rather slowly. Nuclear medicines would not have been the motivation since they did not exist then.203.221.246.141 (talk) 08:08, 30 August 2016 (UTC)