The broad base of radiation processing using cobalt-60 in the United States

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Only recently, an integrated, highly interdependent radiation processing industry based on the use of cobalt-60 has become established in the United States. The principal participants include nearly all the suppliers of disposable medical supplies, several major chemical companies, several privately owned corporations of modest size, the Crown Corporation of a foreign government, and several hundred firms which purchase radiation processing service. The total investment in radiation processing plant and equipment is on the order of fifty million dollars, and the annual retail value of products processed is in the many hundreds of millions of dollars. In all there are twenty-six process irradiators operating in fourteen different states, utilizing nearly twenty million Curies of cobalt-60. Sixteen of these systems are owned and operated by companies which process their own products more or less exclusively. The other ten are owned and operated by six different contract processors who produce and sell little if any product of their own manufacture. The successful efforts of the industry to develop new products and processes are supplemented by the activities of dozens of corporate, government and university research and test facilities located throughout the country. Several firms have designed and constructed viable radiation processing plants, and among the operating medical supply irradiators, there are four different types of conveying mechanism that have proven to be viable. There are two established suppliers of cobalt-60 sources in the megacurie range. Based upon the number of new plants that have been announced, ordered and are under construction, the base appears to be growing at the rate of about 20 percent per year, and many of the existing plants are experiencing increased utilization.