The Clinton nuclear power plant in the USA will begin producing cobalt-60\u00a0for medical and industrial use, according to plant owner Exelon and GE-Hitachi.<\/p>\n
Without specifying details of time or technology, GE-Hitachi announced that its equipment is soon to be installed at the Clinton boiling water reactor in order to produce cobalt-60. The radioactive isotope is used for a variety of medical and industrial purposes including cancer therapy, sterilisation of medical equipment, food irradiation and materials testing.<\/p>\n
It is produced by inserting a \u2019target\u2019 rod rich in non-radioactive cobalt-59\u00a0into a reactor core where free neutrons will be captured, turning cobalt-59\u00a0into cobalt-60. After retrieval from the core, chemical processing can extract the cobalt-60\u00a0for manufacture into a useful radiation source.<\/p>\n
Production should begin at Clinton\u2019s next scheduled outage, with the first cobalt products probably coming shortly after the next outage once the targets have been extracted and processed.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of the world\u2019s cobalt-60\u00a0supply\u00a0\u2014 over 80%\u00a0\u2014 has traditionally come from Canada\u2019s National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River. However, this elderly unit has been offline for essential repairs for many months and will not return until around March this year. In general, the supply situation for medical and industrial isotopes is shaky thanks to a reliance on this kind of ageing research reactor.<\/p>\n
Clinton will join other power reactors that produce cobalt-60\u00a0around the world: Embalse and Atucha 1\u00a0in Argentina, units 1\u00a0and 2\u00a0at Bruce B in Canada; Qinshan 1\u00a0and 2\u00a0in China; Wolsing 1\u00a0and 2\u00a0in South Korea; and Leningrad 1\u00a0in Russia. All of these are pressurized heavy water reactors apart from Leningrad, which is an RBMK-design. Clinton will be the first boiling water reactor to produce cobalt-60.<\/p>\n
Exelon Nuclear president Charles Pardee said: \u201cWe view this as an opportunity for Exelon to support an important medical technology that saves people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Clinton nuclear power plant in the USA will begin producing cobalt-60\u00a0for medical and industrial use, according to plant owner Exelon and GE-Hitachi. Without specifying details of time or technology, GE-Hitachi announced that its equipment is soon to be installed at the Clinton boiling water reactor in order to produce cobalt-60. The radioactive isotope is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-novosti-otrasli"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.6","language":"en","enabled_languages":["ru","en"],"languages":{"ru":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n