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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.
Constantine P. Tzanos, Elias P. Gyftopoulos, Michael J. Driscoll
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 52 | Number 1 | September 1973 | Pages 84-94
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE73-3
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
An iterative optimization method based on linearization and linear programming is developed. The method can be used for the determination of the material distributions in a fast reactor which maximize or minimize integral reactor parameters that are linear functions of the neutron flux and the material volume fractions. The method has been applied to the problems of optimization of the fuel distribution in a reactor of fixed power output, constrained power density, and constrained material volume fractions so as to obtain (a) a maximum initial breeding gain, (b) a minimum critical mass, and (c) a minimum sodium void reactivity. Under this realistic set of constraints, numerical results show that the same fuel distribution yields maximum breeding gain, minimum critical mass, minimum sodium void reactivity, and uniform power density.