Cobalt 60 availability for radiation processing

In the last 20 years, the steady and significant growth in the application of radiation processing to industrial sterilization has been seen. The principal application of this technology is the sterilization of disposable medical products, food irradiation, the irradiation of personal care goods and so on. At present, more than 70 million curies of cobalt-60 supplied by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. have been used for gamma processing in these applications. This is estimated to be more than 80 % of the total cobalt-60 in service in the world. Commercial food irradiation has an exciting future, and as to the impact of food irradiation on the availability of cobalt-60 over the next ten years, two principal factors must be examined, namely, the anticipated demand for cobalt-60 in all radiation processing applications, and the supply of cobalt-60 to reliably meet the expected demand. As for the cobalt-60 in service today, 90 % is used for the sterilization of disposable medical products, 5 % for food irradiation, and 5 % for other application. The demand for up to 30 million curies of cobalt-60 is expected over the next 10 years. Today, it is estimated that over 150,000 tons of spices, fruit and fish are irradiated. The potential cobalt-60 production could exceed 110 million curies per year. Gamma processing application will demand nearly 50 million curies in 1990. (Kako, I.)