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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.
Sara A. Pozzi, Imre Pázsit
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 154 | Number 3 | November 2006 | Pages 367-373
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE06-A2639
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In a recent paper, a simple analytical model to describe the statistics of the number of scattering collisions undergone by fast neutrons as they slow down until they are absorbed was presented. In that study, it was assumed that the moderator was infinite and homogeneous and accounted for scattering and absorption by a single nuclear species. In the present paper, that methodology is extended to the more realistic case of neutron slowing down in a homogeneous mixture. The formulas are derived and evaluated numerically, and the results are found to be in very good agreement with corresponding Monte Carlo simulations. The average value of the number of collisions that a neutron undergoes before being captured is computed. The results for a capture-gated detector composed of hydrogen, carbon, and boron are discussed.