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Westinghouse, Nordion, and PSEG team up to produce Co‑60 in the United States
This past January, Westinghouse Electric Company, Nordion, and PSEG Nuclear formalized agreements to implement newly developed cobalt-60 production technology at Units 1 and 2 of PSEG’s Salem nuclear power plant in New Jersey, with the Co-60 to be supplied to Nordion. Through an ongoing joint initiative, the companies aim to harness U.S. pressurized water reactors to produce a key medical isotope and build the first commercial-scale Co-60 production platform in the United States.
Donald Strominger and Gordon Schlesinger
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 21 | Number 4 | April 1965 | Pages 441-450
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE65-A18788
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Solid-state p-n junction counters have been fabricated to measure fission rates of materials with different fission thresholds. The fission reactions are caused by neutrons varying in energy from thermal energies for U235 to 1.5 MeV for Th232. The data gathered from these solid-state fission counters have been used to compare experimental with calculated fission rates in the AETR cores. The fission counter is assembled by placing an electroplated foil of a fissionable material near a p-n junction detector. An aluminum cap is placed over each detector and foil to form a neat, compact assembly. The resulting counter is small enough to fit inside a reactor with minimum distortion to the neutron spectrum. Fission counters employing Th232, U233, U234, U235, U236, U238, Np237, and Pu239 as the principal fissionable material have been successfully fabricated. These solid-state fission counters have proved reliable instruments to measure neutron fluxes in high gamma-ray fields. True fission events are easily separated from other induced reactions in the counter.