Control Room Cross View

A wide view across the HIFAR control room takes in the full length of the panel desk and the operators' positions in front of it. The panels are arrayed in a slight curve so that all readings are visible from the central operator's chair. Several instrument racks stand against the back wall, fitted with chart recorders, oscilloscopes, and signal conditioners. The lighting is fluorescent, set into the dropped ceiling. The carpet is institutional grey-green. A few framed certificates and notices hang on the back wall: operator licences, shift schedules, safety reminders. Nothing has been moved from the way it was on the last operating day.

HIFAR ran for forty-nine years on three rotating shifts, with operators trained to AEC and later ARPANSA standards monitoring the reactor every minute it was critical. The desk in this photograph is where those monitoring decisions were made: when to insert control rods, when to tag out a circuit, when to evacuate a hall. The reactor went through fuel changes, instrument upgrades, and several rounds of computer modernisation in its working life, but the analogue panel layout stayed largely the same. After shutdown in 2007 the room was retired in place. It has been preserved as a record of what reactor operations looked like across the second half of the twentieth century.