Reactor Containment Building

The reactor containment building at ANSTO HIFAR is a tall cylindrical structure clad in pale concrete, set on its own pad among the other buildings of the Lucas Heights nuclear research complex. The cylinder is roughly thirty metres in diameter and rises several storeys above the surrounding rooflines. Its outer surface is plain, marked only by a few service penetrations and a single personnel airlock at ground level. A roof slab caps the top, with vent stacks rising from it. The colour is uniform off-white, weathered slightly grey on the southern side. The building reads as a sealed object, which is what it was.

HIFAR was the High Flux Australian Reactor, Australia's first nuclear reactor. It started up in 1958 and operated continuously for forty-nine years before being shut down in 2007. The containment building was the radiation barrier between the reactor inside and the world outside, designed to hold pressure and contain radioactive material in any conceivable failure scenario. After decommissioning, the reactor itself was defueled, the core was removed, and the building was sealed. The structure in this photograph is the same cylinder that housed Australia's nuclear research programme for nearly fifty years. It is decommissioned, not abandoned, and the site around it is still active.