NASA’s Mars mission director was in Canberra recently visiting a beige building near Sullivans Creek (where 300 international scientists line up to visit each year) and even though Canberrans don’t notice this building, the world does.

This 52-year-old concrete tower is now an award-winning nuclear science lab (academics call it a Heavy Ion Accelerator) and behind its 50cm-thick walls, scientists wear dosimeters to measure radiation as they stare inside an atom.

The building’s plain exterior belies its futuristic interior where 21 million volts propel billions of particles at ludicrous speed for nuclear experiments. It’s the most powerful Accelerator in the Southern Hemisphere and ranked in the world’s top three.

Today, it received a global nod (recognition previously won by the dish in Parkes) but no movie has been made about Canberra’s Accelerator and its 40-metre-high roof isn’t big enough to play a game of cricket on.

Canberra’s Accelerator is in such high global demand that it runs 24 hours a day and is booked out three months in advance. The going hire rate is $3,000-$6,000 a day (cheap if you compare it to the US where they charge $10,000 an hour).

Commuters drive past the building every day but are oblivious to its cutting-edge nuclear research. While traffic cruises at 80km/h along Parkes Way, atoms inside the Accelerator clock 20 per cent the speed of light. As commuters navigate peak-hour, scientists search for dark matter.

Even more surprising is that when Lake Burley Griffin was just a racecourse and a dusty paddock, the ANU actually had a nuclear physics department. The lake had not long been filled when this ambitious facility was built in 1969 for a cool $1.4m.

In case you’re wondering, the tiny amounts of radiation produced from nuclear experiments are safely absorbed by the facility’s thick concrete walls.

“These are really small amounts of radiation and one of the challenges is conveying a very scary subject in a quantitative way to people,” Heavy Ion Accelerators CEO Dr Tom McGoram said. “Your plane flight to Sydney is about two to three microsieverts [unit used to measure radiation exposure], a chest X-ray might be 100, so we’re down in the few microsieverts so it’s like eating 100 bananas in one go.”

That’s right, bananas are slightly radioactive because they contain a small amount of radioactive potassium (the amount is tiny so keep on peeling).

The accelerator is highly secure, under camera surveillance and accessible with card access only.

“We have a very conservative approach to radiation safety,” Dr McGoram said. “We don’t take it lightly at all but the levels are very, very low. We have detectors, we do run the maths on that and then we arm our systems at a tiny level of radiation. If the radiation is above a certain amount – 10 microsieverts or 100 bananas – the beam of charged particles automatically cuts off.”

The word “nuclear” is often associated with weapons or Oppenheimer, but Canberra’s Accelerator is not preoccupied with bombs but rather fighting climate change and cancer and boosting Australia’s capabilities in the global space race.

Canberra’s Accelerator can add new elements to the periodic table (the same one we had to memorise in high school) such as Lutetium-177, a radioactive isotope used to treat prostate cancer. Nuclear scientists can date isotopes in our groundwater (don’t be alarmed, chlorine-36 is found naturally in water that comes from the sky). 

And right here on Earth at Acton Peninsula, Canberra’s Accelerator can simulate radiation found in outer space.

“We can simulate radiation in a low-earth orbit and we use that to test electronics and shielding of spacecraft before they go into space,” Dr McGoram said. “We’re working with a range of private companies to make sure they’re not making space junk. They’re actually making satellites that will work.”

NASA’s Mars Exploration program delegates toured the Accelerator last year, including its Space Irradiation Beamline, which emulates space radiation conditions for testing electronics and radiation shielding materials.

As for any radioactive waste from such nuclear experiments, Dr McGoram said the quantity was minimal.

“We have very little in the way of nuclear waste or radioactive materials,” he said. “We’ve got places where we can shield them until they cool off. We’re talking about minute amounts of isotopes and a piece of metal the size of a five-cent piece.”

Dr McGoram did his PhD at ANU back in the ‘90s and he’s been involved with the Accelerator on-and-off for 30 years.

“It gets in your blood,” he said. “It’s a place where I’ve been really privileged to have had an association with. It defined my adult career and was the reason I came to Australia from New Zealand. It’s become part of my life.”

For a virtual tour of the ANU’s Heavy Ion Accelerator, visit physics.anu.edu.au/tour/nuclear