Co60 | NUCLEAR MEDICINE
Left: Cobalt-60 sealed sources located inside a rack within the storage pool of an irradiation sterilisation facility. Photo credit: Nordion (Canada) Inc.
The design of the finished product, sealed radiation
sources, must comply with international standards and be licenced by national regulators, and their manufacture must be to the highest quality standards. Only a very few specialist companies have the necessary infrastructure to meet these requirements and supply to the global irradiation sterilisation industry. All of the cobalt-60 from the Bruce Power and OPG reactors, currently making up around 50% of global supply, is manufactured into sources by Nordion (Canada) Inc., the world’s largest supplier to the irradiation industry worldwide. The supply of cobalt-60 from Russia, which represents about 25% of global supply, is also mostly through Nordion although some volume is supplied direct to the irradiation industry by JSC Isotope, an enterprise of Rosatom. Despite the challenges to continued supply from Russia in light of the current geopolitical situation, governments around the world appreciate the importance of cobalt-60 to global healthcare and have worked hard to ensure supply from Russia remains uninterrupted.
Most cobalt-60 produced in China and India and some
from Argentina is used to supply regional markets. This is partly due to a desire to support local operators but also a result of licensing restrictions and transportation constraints.
Cobalt-60 supply and demand status Irradiation technology is applied globally by a network of approximately three hundred irradiators using cobalt-60. Approximately 80% of this cobalt-60 usage is for the sterilisation of medical devices. In the US alone, it is estimated that some 16 billion devices are sterilised annually using cobalt-60. The demand for sterilisation and, therefore, cobalt-60 is
growing at rates not previously seen due to an increasing and ageing population, greater access to health care and the development of new devices that require sterilisation. Some sectors are experiencing double digit annual growth rates and in recent years, vaccine supply pressure concentrated the need for sterilisation and, in some cases, created a backlog.
Above: Co-60 is widely used in the sterilisation of medical instruments
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