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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.
Üner Çolak, Volkan Seker
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 149 | Number 2 | February 2005 | Pages 131-137
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE04-17
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In this study, the criticality analysis for a pebble bed reactor, HTR-10, is performed with Monte Carlo simulations. The MCNP4B code package is utilized in the analysis with ENDF/B-VI continuous energy cross sections. The full core with the initial loading case is considered in simulations. The variation of the effective multiplication factor as a function of core loading height is also analyzed. Three different geometrical models are employed to see the effect of geometrical detail on the criticality calculations. Results are compared with diffusion calculations as well as the experimental data. Results show that the use of the homogenized fuel zone model does not yield acceptable results and underestimates the core criticality. However, the results obtained by using models with uniform and randomly distributed coated fuel particles in the fuel zone are in quite good agreement and there is not any systematic difference. Furthermore, criticality values do not change significantly with different random arrangements of coated fuel particles in fuel spheres. However, the random and irregular arrangements of pebbles may result in statistically different criticality values at least due to varying streaming effect.