ATOMIC E!, TfRGY ESTABLISI-EiLNT, LUCAS HEIGHo
QRD MARH, 1 962
Speech by the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. R. G. Menzies
Professor Baxter, and colleagues, and ladies and gentlemen:
Those of you who have suffered under me before in the
opening of something will knor that I have now developed the
almost perfect technique: I open the building, or the buildings,
first, and then talk afterwards, on the sound principle that if I
talk first I may well forget to open the building at the fihish.
Today I am opening two buildings. This building, the
Reactor Physics Building and the Radiation, Biology, Healthy
Physics Building a complex of names which, of course, are selfexplanatory
to laymen like me and perhaps to some of you.
Behind me is a low power reactor called " Moata". All I
know about this name is that it is an aboriginal name, stolen
from the indigenous inhabitants of' the country, which originally
meant " fire sticks". I am bound to say that if any of our
forefathers of the aboriginal races had been told fire sticks of
this kind would some day be put on the ancient hunting ground
there would have been tremendous incredulity and, perhaps, some
form of trouble. But here we are.
As we drove in here today I remembered, because I had
been told, that in 1955 this vas just scrub and sandstone
outcrops. What has been done in the course of something under 7
years is, I think, remarkable; and my colleagues of the Treasury
think that it is even more remarkable because its capital cost has
been œ llm. Its operating expenses I hesitate to refer to because
we haven't yet reached the Budget and the preparation of the
estimates. But I have gathered that it is fairly substantial.
And really what I am doing this afternoon is not only to occupy
your time for a few minutes, but to put in a bit of a plug with
the Treasury you will understand, ther. ifore, if I appear to be
a little expansive on the subject of Lucas Heights.
This place, taking it as a whole, one element of which,
the principal Hifar Reactor, I opened Ithink in 1958 and another,
the Engineering Building in 1960, and this one in 192, this
remarkable enterprise is, I believe, essentially a gathering
together not only of bricks and mortar, but of very high class
scientific manpower. And when I say manpower, of course, I rely
on the Acts Interpretation Act tuhich says that man includes woman,
the ridiculous proposition which only the Parliamentary draftsmen
could seriously believe.
Now, Sir, a great research establishrant like this has
very many aspects. First of all, research is being conducted here
into a variety of aspects of reactor systems avoiding duplication
I emphasise that and thus, by avoiding duplication, but by
doing first-class rork, adding to the sum total of scientific
knowledge in the wvorld. I said I emphasised avoiding
duplication because I know tat there are many people I hope a
diminishing number who look at an enterprise of this kind and
who say, " Well, what arc they doing here that can't be better done
elsewhere? Is this just a matter of prestige?" And the answer to
that is that it is not, in any rctal sense, a mere matter of
prestige. Iork is being done here which is not being done in
other places; and the people who are engaged here in this . Tork
involving such skill and knowledge that it is beyond the
comprehension of most of us, including mo, are adding to the total
sun of scientific knoeledge in this field in the world. Now I've
said that, and I've repeated it_, and I emphasise it, because,
after all, the people of Australia are the people who provide the
means for doing these things, and tne people of Australia are
ontitled to know that -, hat is being done Is of genuine and
cumulative significance.
In the second place what is being done here involves the
training of Australian scientists and of course we haven't an
unlimited supply of scientists in Australia. I don't suppose any
country has an unlimited supply of scientists. But as the world
goes on pell mell, particularly in the last decade, or the last
years, it becomes increasingly important that we in Australia,
possessing great native talent in these fields should produce the
highest possible quality of scientific manpower, and do it to the
highest possible level, and do it to as great a numerical extent
as we can. This is one of the great tests of national progress,
and of the advance of world knowledge.
Now by training scientists here we do two things. I say
this to the lay people, if any, who are here today. First of all
it assists our own capacity to contribute to world knowledge. I
have mentioned that. I repeat it. It assists our capacity to
make a contribution which is significant and which will be, in
many ways, original. And in the second place, not being entirely
unselfish on this matter, it assists our capacity to take full
advantage of work done elsewhere in the world. Because what is
going on in other countries may mean very little to the
uninstructed; but it will mean a very great deal to people of
high scientific attainments in this field right here in
Australia. Therefore we have this both ways. We contribute and we
gain. And in order to contribute, and in order to gain, we must
set our marks high and achieve the highest possible standard of
efficiency, of understanding, of research, of application.
Then, Sir, of course, there is another aspect of this
matter. We want to attain in Australia standards of scientific
skill which will do two other things. First, to facilitate
exchanges with similar bodies overseas. This is an old problem
as to whether people should go from Australia to other countries,
as to whether people from other countries should come here.
There are people, I'm sure, still living who believe that
whatever we do we ought to huddle our garments about us, and keep
it to ourselves and show how clever we are. But of course there
can be no major advances in this field unless our people, trained
and working here are able to go to other countries with
intelligent and educated minds in this field, able to find the
best that is going on; and unless we can at the same time attract
to this place men of great consequence in these fields from other
countries. It is the fluidity of scientific knowledge in the
world which is at the very heart of developing the sum total of
scientific knowledge in the world.
Then, of course, I must say to those among you, if there
are such, who have what people are pleased to call hard,
practical minds, that every now and then there is what I would
call in an entirely unscientific way, a by-product of the work
that is being done here. Research, yes, above all; but, in the
course of this research I was just discussing it at lunch time
discoveries are made of immense utility, such as the discovery of
new techniques for welding stainless steel. I won't go into that
story but it is fascinating to me to discover that in the very
course of experimental work here problems crop up by the way in
the use of materials which require a solution. The solution
being found turns out to be of general application in many other
fields of industry.
I hesitate to commit ryself to the proposition that a
radio-active isotope is a by-product I don't suppose it is.
But I do know, as you know, increasingly, that the production of
radio-active isotopes here has opened up a new field in Australia
for agricultural research, for medical research.
3.
Indeed it isn't long ago, before the election I assure you, that
I went to Newcastle and at that time I was received with every
outward sign of friendliness for all I know it still continues,
though a little muted, perhaps, by events and I was told there
and then by people actively concerned with the development of
Newcastle that the use of radio isotopes from here in the
investigation of the movements of silt in the lower reaches
particularly, of the Hunter River had turned out to be of enormous
practical advantage.
On top of that, let me once more say to those who think
we may be duplicating work, that I am credibly informed by the
technical members of the Commission and to them I make my bow
that there are types of radioactive isotopes which don't carry,
which have an early period of radioactive decay and therefore
can't usefully be imported. But if they are produced here then
they have a longer period of life, they have an immediate
application to the job in hand.
One matter that has been mentioned to me is that Cobalt
as I will, in my ignorance, call it, is being used at a great
city hospital in Sydney in the treatment of cancer. Now all these
things are not the main end result, but they are fascinating
incidental results in a great piece of research of this kind.
The only other thing that perhaps I ought to say to you
is this. There are many people, indeed there must be many
hundreds of millions of people in the world who, if you say
nuclear power think at once of nuclear weapons, of the great,
pressing, anguishing problems of nuclear military power in the
world and are therefore a little bit inclined to say about the
nuclear physicists " A curse on you. You have brought nothing to
the world except the threat of imminent disaster". That is
because, of course, what is best advertised tends to be more
popularly understood. Here today we have a magnificent
opportunity of being reminded that the work being done in this
field is not primarily work designed to destroy people, but is
work designed to uncover a new source of advantage for the human
race. We are all familiar with the phrase that was, I think,
used by President Eisenhower about " atoms for peace". But you
look at our own country. It is quite true that there are many
parts of Australia where vast supplies of coal make the problem of
power production technically simple, though it nay be,
occasionally, financially difficult; there are great enterprises
of hydro-electric power both on the mainland and in Tasmania.
But there will come a time as the population of this country
increases, as new resources are uncovered in remote parts of this
country, when nuclear power will become as much the servant of
peaceful enterprise as thermal power or hydro-electric power.
Indeed I am told by those who understand these matters that it may
well be that in parts of Australia remote from coal, or water, in
an appropriate position, nuclear power may become quite
competitive by the early years of the next decade, by the early
1970' s. It doesn't end there. The other day I was reading a book
which the President of the United States was good enough to send
to me containing a series of stateLionts made by him during the
first 12 months of his office. I was veiy interested to find that
one of them related to what had to be done, and no d-; ubt very
largely by the use of nuclear power, in experimental work on
taking the salt out of water. Think of what this could mean to
Australia; think of what this could mean to a continent whose
greatest problem is water, having regarc to its area and to the
distribution of its population.
The other day my friend Dr. Raggatt, under the guise of
proposing a vote of thanks to somebody, made the principal speech
of the evening. I am familiar with this technique it happens to
me regularly at almost every political meeting I have. But he
did draw public attention to a matter with which some of you have
been familiar, or at least interested, for a long time, or for
some years now, the great problem of creating water storages, not
by the painful and expensive processes of earth m-ving as we've
known them in the past, but by the definitive use of nuclear
explosions in order to create a suitable crater and a suitable
holding means. Well, no doubt this is in its early days and
there will be many blind walls of ignorance to get through before
it is ultimately achieved. But I mention it to you merely to
indicate that we are only at the beginning of the peaceful
developmental application of a means which today is too commonly
regarded as merely an instrument of destruction.
The day will come when we will have nuclear powered
ships sailing into our harbours; the day may come, though
Heaven forfend, when we will need to be infinitely better
informed than we are now about protecting people against fall-out.
And one of the buildings that I am opening today has, as its
special function, or one of its special functions, to study this
matter. Then, of course, on top of all that, in an international
sense we will receive, or continue to receive, into this
enterprise students from South-East Asia, people who cone here
either under the Colombo Plan, or, as I believe increasingly,
under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
This is something tremendously exciting, I feel it myself; I
hope that everybody will feel it. This is not just like opening
a factory. This is not just like opening something which will
apply known means to achieve a prodeterminod result. This is one
of the great exploratory exer:' cises in the history of our country
into powers as yet a little known which will some day be
imr. oasurably better known. And the better known they are I
believe the better it will be for ordinary mankind.
So, Sir, these two buildings today, coming on top of
what has been done here before add up to a new adventure, an
exciting adventure, and, as I believe I may say, a highly
practical adventure. They will, I believe Sir, serve to correct
the widely held impression that nuclear power is an instrume. nt of
destruction. They will, as they go on, persuade more and more
people to realise that what we are dealing with today is an
instrument of human development ultimately to operate for great
huan happiness. Sir, I have a very great pleasure indeed in declaring
these two buildings open. ( Applause)