ALLANCETM - the new multi-modal flexible irradiation system

As the rapid progress of gamma irradiation markets, many developing countries eagerly want to own an irradiator that can adapt to a range of low-to-high-dose applications, and hope the facility is cost efficient. But few of them can afford the irradiators supplied by the developed countries. Maybe the Allance irradiator is a solution. The engineers from Beijing Institute of Nuclear Engineering (BINE) in China and from MDS Nordion in Canada, worked together for more than two years, presented a new irradiator named Allance in June. 2000. Allance is a single source-rack facility based on the design of MDS Nordion's JS series carrier irradiators, its source capacity is 1.5 million curies Co-60. The dimension of the shield is:19 meters(L)x12 meters(W)x 6 meters(H). The distance between the center of the source rack and the inner pass carriers can be about 88mm. Each irradiator comes with a total of 50 product carriers. The dimension of each carrier is 1077mm(L)x 663mm(W)x2950mm(H). The DUR (dose uniformity ratio) is less than 1.7. The source efficiency ratio can be 40% or more. The facility has three operational modes: Two Inner Pass Batch Mode, Two Outer Pass Automatic Mode and Four Pass Automatic Mode. It can satisfy various requirements of irradiation processing. The system is designed for manufacture and component sourcing in China, which partners high quality Canadian design with cost-efficient Chinese assembly. (author)