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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.
T. Kammash, D. L. Galbraith
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 106 | Number 2 | October 1990 | Pages 156-159
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE90-A27467
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A recently proposed, novel approach to inertial confinement fusion is examined as a potential source of fast neutrons. Known as the magnetically insulated inertial confinement fusion (MICF) system, it combines the favorable aspects of both magnetic and inertial fusions into one. In this approach, the hot fusion plasma is created inside a hollow spherical pellet whose inner walls are coated with deuterium-tritium fuel and ablated by a laser that enters the target through a hole. Physical containment of the plasma is provided by the metallic shell that surrounds the fuel, while its thermal energy is insulated from the wall by a strong, self-generated magnetic field. In contrast to implosion-type inertial fusion systems, the lifetime of the hot plasma in MICF is dictated by the shock speed in the shell, rather than by the sound speed in the plasma; as a result, it is about two orders of magnitude longer. This translates into a significantly higher Q (ratio of fusion energy to input energy) values at modest input laser energies, which in turn means it can serve as an effective source of high energy neutrons.