Salem's Reactor Has a Second Job Now

Westinghouse, Nordion and PSEG sign landmark deal to produce Cobalt-60 in pressurized water reactors

14 Apr 2026

Every year, roughly four in ten single-use medical devices are sterilized using Cobalt-60, a radioactive isotope that has quietly become one of the most critical materials in global healthcare manufacturing. The problem is where it comes from. For decades, supply has been concentrated in a handful of reactors in Canada and Russia, leaving manufacturers and contract sterilizers exposed to a geographic chokehold that nobody has seriously challenged until now.

In January 2026, Westinghouse, Nordion, and PSEG Nuclear formalized a long-term commercial agreement to produce Cobalt-60 at PSEG's Salem nuclear generating station in New Jersey. It is the first attempt at commercial-scale production in a pressurized water reactor. That matters because pressurized water reactors account for more than 70 percent of commercial nuclear capacity worldwide, meaning a proven template at Salem could be replicated across reactor sites globally, threading Cobalt-60 production into an entirely new kind of distributed supply network.

The three parties have carved out distinct roles that play to existing strengths. Westinghouse brings proprietary production technology adapted specifically for pressurized water reactor environments. PSEG contributes the licensed infrastructure at Salem. Nordion, already the world's dominant Cobalt-60 supplier, handles processing and distribution to sterilization customers across the medical device industry. The logic is tight: each partner fills a gap the others cannot.

Nordion's President, Riaz Bandali, has described the collaboration as arriving at a critical moment. Demand for Cobalt-60 continues to climb, while accelerator-based sterilization alternatives face their own deployment hurdles and have not materialized as the easy substitutes some once expected.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently reviewing PSEG's licence amendment request, with implementation targeted for later this year pending approval. European manufacturers and contract sterilizers, who have long felt the pressure of supply constraints, stand to gain significantly from a more resilient global chain. If Salem works, the bottleneck that has shadowed the sterilization industry for a generation may finally have an answer.