Anti-aircraft cage on Lucas Heights Reactor

While engineers with high career hopes discuss building Australian nuclear power reactors expensive safety construction on Australia's only reactor speaks to a tangible terrorist threat.

Following "9/11" (September 11, 2001) there was/is international concern that aircraft could be used against a nuclear reactor. A crash barrier cage on Australia's Lucas Heights experimental and medical isotope reactor was therefore rapidly placed around and on top of it. Lucas is the only reactor in Australia, and one of only 11 reactors worldwide that produce medical supplies. (Photo courtesy Australian government owned ABC News June 28, 2018).

The Sydney Morning Herald reported, in part, in 2004:

"A huge steel net is being built over Australia's new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights to protect its core if an aircraft is flown into it. Dubbed the "chip basket", the striking 30 metre-long feature, the first of its kind in the world, will act as a net to catch a terrorist-flown aircraft.

"It's a novel approach to the design," the project manager, Ross Miller, said. "Most modern reactors would have a design that hardens them against the impact of light aircraft. Certainly we've had to beef up security since September 11."

The grillage was part of the original design in July 2000 but at that stage it was seen as protection against a freak accident involving a light plane crashing into the reactor, he said.

...Professor Richard Broinowski from Sydney University said he was concerned about the location of the new reactor in suburban Sydney and its obvious vulnerability to terrorist attack.

..."This reactor will have in it a certain amount of highly radiotoxic substances. If they are impacted by an explosion it could have an enormous venting of toxic chemicals in a cloud that could descend over parts of Sydney. It would be catastrophic," Professor Broinowski, a former diplomat, said.

He said Lucas Heights's vulnerability was demonstrated recently when members of Greenpeace were able to breach security and get inside and get on top of the reactor.

...the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), said that based on scientific tests it was “confident...there would be no release of radiation," he said. "We intrinsically designed the new reactor to be far less of a security risk than the current reactor. To get through to the radioactive component they've got to get through a hell of a lot of concrete."

The new reactor will be completed early next year but will not be operational until July 2006.

Last month, the Herald reported that ANSTO had been ordered to significantly upgrade its emergency response plans to include the consequences of a terrorist attack."