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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.
Karin Rudman, Patricia Dickerson, Darrin Byler, Robert McDonald, Harn Lim, Pedro Peralta, Chris Stanek, Kenneth McClellan
Nuclear Technology | Volume 182 | Number 2 | May 2013 | Pages 145-154
Technical Paper | Special Issue on the Symposium on Radiation Effects in Ceramic Oxide and Novel LWR Fuels / Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A16426
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The oxygen content during the intermediate and final stages of sintering can have a strong effect on the microstructural evolution of oxide fuels. Two depleted urania (d-UO2.0 and d-UO2.14) samples, sintered up to a theoretical density of 90%, were serial sectioned using a focused ion beam and characterized with electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD). The EBSD data were used to make three-dimensional reconstructions of the microstructures to evaluate their characteristics at an intermediate stage of sintering. The oxygen content was found to affect grain shape and grain boundary (GB) mobility, as curved and elongated grains were observed in UO2.0, as well as stronger pore-GB interactions, which is an indication that microstructure was less evolved in UO2.0. Both samples presented a similar fraction ([approximate]20%) of special, coincident site lattice boundaries, with larger amounts of Σ3n GBs, and a rather large fraction of Σ11 GBs for UO2.14. Crystallographic GB planes were also determined to study the distributions of all GB parameters. The UO2.0 sample had a large fraction of GB planes close to the Σ3 twinning planes, which suggests that lower-energy interfaces are used to minimize energy in this sample, potentially due to lower overall GB mobility as compared to UO2.14.