ANS is committed to advancing, fostering, and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.
Explore the many uses for nuclear science and its impact on energy, the environment, healthcare, food, and more.
Explore membership for yourself or for your organization.
Conference Spotlight
2026 ANS Winter Conference & Expo
November 15–18, 2026
Phoenix, AZ|Arizona Grand Resort & Spa
Latest Magazine Issues
Sep 2026
Jan 2026
2026
Latest Journal Issues
Nuclear Science and Engineering
October 2026
Nuclear Technology
Fusion Science and Technology
Latest News
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.
Thomas E. Booth
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 138 | Number 1 | May 2001 | Pages 96-103
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE01-A2204
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
It is well known that zero-variance Monte Carlo solutions are possible if an exact importance function is available to bias the random walks. Geometric convergence with iteration has been demonstrated when the importance function estimated on the n'th iteration is used to bias the random walks on the n + 1st iteration, i.e., adaptive importance sampling. Note that geometric convergence with iteration may be less efficient than a nonadaptive Monte Carlo calculation if the time per iteration grows too fast. This paper shows a general method for sampling the zero-variance kernels enabling a Monte Carlo solution that converges inversely with the computer time.