Australia celebrated the 70th anniversary of the opening of the nation’s first nuclear research reactor in April, a milestone that was largely unremarked on in mainstream conversations, despite the immense contribution of the facility to health innovation and commercial ventures.
Since April 1953, the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney has hosted some of the most sophisticated research projects ever conducted on our shores and has enabled significant advances in diagnoses and treatments for cancer and other diseases.
It is also a key link in the silicon supply chain for the global semiconductor industry, providing irradiation services known as Neutron Transmutation Doping – a process that improves the conductivity properties of silicon – to a large proportion of high-grade silicon ingots used in semiconductor fabs around the world.
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