Pickering Nuclear produces steady supply of Cobalt-60

Today, Cobalt-60 is harvested from three units at Pickering B and at Bruce B station, which has been leased to and operated by Bruce Power since 2001.

In November 2016, Bruce Power and OPG signed a Memorandum of Understanding that will see the companies work together to ensure a steady long-term supply of Cobalt-60 as operations at Pickering wind down in 2024. This includes setting up a joint working group to look at expanding Cobalt-60 production to OPG’s Darlington Nuclear Generating Station and Bruce Power’s Bruce A facilities.

A product of the nuclear fission that takes place inside a CANDU reactor, Cobalt-60 is produced by irradiating Cobalt59 adjuster rods from one scheduled maintenance outage to the next. During this process, a good portion of the Cobalt-59 inserts absorbs a neutron and change at the atomic level to become radioactive Cobalt-60. At each planned maintenance outage, the Cobalt-60 adjuster rods are removed, processed and safely loaded for shipment to Nordion.

As Cobalt-60 emits gamma radiation, it is an ideal isotope for medical and industrial applications. In the medical field, Cobalt-60 is used to sterilize surgical pre-packaged medical instruments, implantable devices, syringes, and medical gowns. The isotope is also used to safely irradiate food products after they’ve been packaged, ridding them of insects and harmful bacteria, like E.coli.