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https://www.nist.gov/history/radiation-physics-building/facilities/cobalt-60-pool-source

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NIST History

## Radiation Physics Building

-  Staff  Expand or Collapse    -  Martin Berger 
  -  Randall S. Caswell 
  -  Louis Costrell 
  -  Margaret Ehrlich 
  -  Evans V. Hayward 
  -  Raymond W. Hayward 
  -  John Hubbell 
  -  Herman William Koch 
  -  James E. Leiss 
  -  Robert Loevinger 
  -  Robert Madden 
  -  Wilfrid B. Mann 
  -  William L. McLaughlin 
  -  Joseph W. Motz 
  -  Harold Wyckoff 
-  Facilities  Expand or Collapse    -  Cobalt-60 Pool Source 
  -  Isotope Separator Laboratory Facility 
  -  Linac 
  -  Mammographic X-Ray Facility 
  -  Manganese Bath Facility 
  -  Positive-Ion Van de Graaff Accelerator 
  -  Radon Calibration Facility 
  -  Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility 
  -  The Curiously Colorful Wall of NIST's Radiation Physics Building 
  -  Construction 
-  Research Highlights  Expand or Collapse    -  External Beam Radiotherapy 
  -  Hazards From Radioactivity in the Environment 
  -  Neutron Spin Filters 
  -  Nuclear Medicine 
  -  Nuclear Theory and Radiation Data 
  -  Radiation Detection Standards for Homeland Security 
-  Modernization 
-  Colloquium Talk 
-  Credits 

# Cobalt-60 Pool Source

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In 1965, on the newly built Gaithersburg, Maryland, campus of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS, now the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST), a cobalt-60 “pool source” was installed in a special annex to Building 245 known as the F wing. For more than 50 years, the intense radioactivity of the source provided a national calibration facility for high-dose industrial radiation dosimetry, the measurement of radiation exposure. 
Credit:

High-dose radiation sources come into play when sterilizing food and medical equipment, measuring the durability of electronic equipment in high-radiation environments such as outer space, and in measuring the biological effects of high doses of radiation. Multiple cobalt-60 sources are available for use at NIST, but the pool source, when it was installed, was one of the most intense, well-calibrated facilities in the U.S. 
Credit:

Cobalt-60 has a half-life of 5.26 years; thus, the initially intense source decayed over 10 half-lives until it no longer provided a useful dose rate compared with the other sources available to the Dosimetry Group. It was decommissioned in 2018. 
Credit:

PhysicsRadiation

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