Westinghouse, Nordion, and PSEG to produce cobalt-60 at New Jersey nuclear plant, ending U.S. reliance on foreign supply

Westinghouse, Nordion, and PSEG Nuclear signed agreements in January 2026 to produce cobalt-60 at Units 1 and 2 of PSEG’s Salem nuclear power plant in New Jersey. It’s the first commercial-scale effort to manufacture the critical medical isotope domestically using pressurized water reactor technology.

The United States consumes roughly half the world’s cobalt-60 supply — and currently produces none of it at home. That gap is now the target of a first-of-its-kind production platform, years in the making, that could reshape how the country secures one of health care’s most essential radioisotopes.

Three companies formalize plan to produce Co-60 at Salem plant

The January agreements bring together three organizations with distinct, complementary roles. Westinghouse handles fuel assembly expertise and manufacturing. Nordion — a subsidiary of Sotera Health, headquartered in Ottawa, and the leading global Co-60 producer since 1946 — manages processing, source manufacturing, and supply chain logistics. PSEG Nuclear operates Salem and generates roughly 40 percent of New Jersey’s electricity.

It fits within existing Westinghouse fuel assemblies, with cobalt rodlets functioning as discrete burnable absorbers, kept separate from the fuel rods themselves.

The Westinghouse-Nordion partnership actually goes back to 2019. By the time cobalt targets are scheduled for installation at Salem this fall, that’s a seven-year development effort. First commercial harvest is projected around 2029 — a full decade from concept to deployment.

Getting here required fuel experts, licensing specialists, operations personnel, and transportation teams across all three companies. The goal is to establish the first commercial-scale Co-60 production platform in the U.S. using pressurized water reactors. That scope alone tells you how novel this undertaking really is.

Why Co-60 production moved to U.S. pressurized water reactors

The Co-60 supply chain is small and highly specialized. Only about 20 reactors worldwide currently produce it — mostly CANDU reactors in Canada, Argentina, China, and India, plus RBMK reactors in Russia. Once harvested, the cobalt goes to one of just five processing manufacturers globally. Nordion is one of them.

That’s a fragile system for an isotope this important. The U.S. consumes roughly 50 percent of global supply yet has zero domestic production, and growing demand combined with obvious geopolitical risks made finding a domestic route increasingly urgent.

The answer was hiding in plain sight. The U.S. PWR fleet represents about 70 percent of the world’s 400-plus operating commercial reactors — enormous untapped capacity that’s already built, licensed, and running.

Engineering challenges of adapting Co-60 production to PWR conditions

Moving Co-60 production into a PWR sounds straightforward enough in theory. In practice, it took years of serious engineering work. The core problem is environmental: PWRs are far harsher than CANDU or RBMK reactors.

In a CANDU, cobalt targets are irradiated at roughly 140–158°F under near-atmospheric pressure. A PWR subjects those same targets to temperatures around 608°F and pressures of approximately 2,250 psi. That’s a fundamentally different materials challenge — not a minor adjustment.

The timeline compounds the difficulty. Cobalt targets must stay in a PWR for up to three 18-month operating cycles, potentially five years of continuous exposure to heat, pressure, and neutron irradiation. Corrosion, oxidation, and material growth all had to be engineered around.

The three companies’ solution is the Cobalt Burnable Absorber, or COBA — a specially designed insert based on Nordion patents. It fits within existing Westinghouse fuel assemblies, with cobalt rodlets functioning as discrete burnable absorbers, kept separate from the fuel rods themselves. That separation simplifies implementation, harvesting, transportation, and licensing considerably. Harvesting happens during refueling outages using modular workstations, with no impact on plant operations and no permanent plant modifications required.

On the regulatory side, PSEG submitted a license amendment request to the NRC in late 2025. It includes both a site-specific element for Salem and a generic element — meaning other U.S. utilities that want to adopt the same technology will face a simpler licensing path, building on the groundwork PSEG has already laid.

Medical and industrial uses that depend on a stable Co-60 supply

The stakes are real. Co-60 is used to sterilize more than 16 billion single-use medical devices in the United States every year — a number that makes the supply chain’s fragility hard to ignore.

Gamma irradiation with Co-60 has more than 60 years of history as a sterilization method, supporting orthopedic surgery, cardiovascular procedures, endoscopy, biopsy, and cancer treatments. The roughly 300 radiation facilities worldwide — including about 55 in the U.S. — that rely on Co-60 sealed sources are woven into the daily functioning of modern medicine.

Non-medical uses add further breadth. Spices, meat, poultry, polymers, pet treats, and cosmetics can all be sterilized or physically altered through Co-60 irradiation. As domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing expands, Co-60’s role in sterilizing packaging and bioprocessing equipment becomes even more critical. The Department of Energy has formally designated Co-60 as a radioisotope in critical need of domestic production capability — a direct acknowledgment of how exposed the current supply chain is.

Broader implications for the U.S. nuclear fleet and supply chain resilience

The Salem project could meet at least half of U.S. Co-60 demand while complementing existing Canadian production once commercial harvesting begins around 2029. For utilities, it adds a recurring revenue stream from infrastructure already in place — no new reactors, no major capital overhauls.

If the model works at Salem, it can travel. PSEG’s licensing work creates a replicable template for other U.S. PWR operators, and since PWRs run in many countries, the approach could eventually extend beyond U.S. borders. The initiative also aligns with recent federal executive actions aimed at strengthening domestic health care manufacturing and reducing dependence on foreign supply chains.

Put simply: Westinghouse Nuclear, Nordion, and PSEG are using existing nuclear infrastructure to close a decade-old gap in U.S. supply chain resilience. Cobalt targets go in at Salem this fall. First harvest is expected around 2029. Other utilities can now follow without starting from scratch.

Kelly Lippke

Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.