The Science and Mathematics Society had organised a trip for Science Upper Sixers to the Malaysian Nuclear Agency.
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It was raining not-very-heavily this morning when we took off from Victoria Institution. We soon got stuck in a traffic jam at Sungai Besi. Later on I found out that the jam was caused by a flash flood. Yellow “teh-ais” coloured drain water could be seen overflowing from the longkang, not more than 300m from the SMART Tunnel entrance…
Malaysia Boleh!
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When we reached Bangi, we were greeted by Malaysian Nuclear Agency’s entrance, which was way better than what I imagined, and also guarded strictly by the police. We were first given a brief introduction on the agency and uses/importance of nuclear science. I’ll skip this part as most of us fell asleep in the cool, comfortable room.
We were later taken to a place where it really surprised me, the TRIGA PUSPATI nuclear reactor. I never knew and never expected Malaysia would have any nuclear reactors, but this 1 megawatt reactor, is already more than 25 years old… And it holds 100 over Uranium rods. Not the big ones, only half a meter long each, and costs hundreds of thousands per kilo of U-235.
All of us were instructed to off our phones and no cameras are allowed. Then, we were led to the reactor room. I actually broke one of their rules: No one under 18 is allowed to visit the reactor as the radiation might still be too much for the underaged, like me! XD Sadly, only my two teachers are allowed to have a look inside the three-storey-high reactor from above. It also has a mini particle collider (not really a particle collider, just something that shoots a specimen with a beam of high energy neutrons, considered mini compared to the LHC at CERN).
After that, we went to the (I forgot the name). It is a place where manufactured foods, herbals, laboratory apparatus, medical equipments, rubber gloves and other products are sterilised. Cobalt-60 is used to irradiate the products. The process happens in a chamber, enclosed in a two-meter-thick high density concrete layer to prevent any possible gamma leakage… While the agency’s employee was explaining how the process take place, I was six inches away from the lead door that leads into the chamber. According to her, the radiation level inside there would range from 10-25 kiloGy (Gy=Gray, a unit to measure radiation exposure, named after a person), while 34 Gy is enough to kill a person. And I was only six inches away from a door that defines the line between life, and death…
We were not given any souvenirs. As informed earlier during the visit, we were collecting radiation the whole morning as souvenir.
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My leg somehow got burned by Cobalt-60’s gamma, when I was hit by the Cobalt-60 stick carried by an employee…
