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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.
William B. Terney
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 57 | Number 3 | July 1975 | Pages 239-245
Technical Note | doi.org/10.13182/NSE75-A26755
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
In the newer, larger pressurized-water reactor cores, the calculated power distributions are fairly sensitive to the number of neutron groups used and to the treatment of the reflector cross sections. Comparisons between transport and diffusion calculations show that the latter substantially underpredict the reflector albedos in the fast (top) group and that the power distribution is shifted toward the core center when compared to 4-group transport theory results. When the fast-neutron diffusion coefficients are altered to make the transport- and diffusion-theory albedos agree, the power distributions are also brought into agreement. An expression for the fast-neutron diffusion coefficients in reflector regions has been derived such that the diffusion calculation reproduces the albedo obtained from a transport solution. In addition, a correction factor for mesh effects applicable to coarse mesh problems is presented. The use of the formalism gives the correct albedos and improved power distributions.