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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.
Yoichi Watanabe
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 118 | Number 3 | November 1994 | Pages 178-185
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE94-A19383
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Electrical conductivities of weakly ionized nuclear plasmas were computed by numerically solving an electron Boltzmann equation. A pure 3He gas and 3He-Na gaseous mixtures were analyzed. The gases are ionized by fast ions (0.19-MeV tritons and 0.59-MeV protons), which are generated from in situ neutron-3He nuclear reactions. The results show that the electrical conductivity of the 3He-Na gaseous mixtures is higher than that of the pure helium gas because of the enhanced ionization of seeded sodium atoms by subexcitation electrons. This effect is not included in a standard Maxwellian model. An analytical formula of W values for gaseous mixtures was suggested to incorporate the effect of subexcitation electrons. The formula can be applied to analyze chemically complex systems.