“If you know someone is exposed above [a certain] point, if they do experience central nervous system collapse, our experience in [the] medical world is there’s not an awful lot you can do, it’s not likely to be successful and they’re likely to die," O'Donnell said.

Stories like that are few and far between, of course. After 40 years in the business, Shepherd said the biggest change has come in the concentration on the safety aspects of the work.


"It used to be that you would be concerned to stay under the maximum levels of radiation you could get every year, and now it is a strong focus on minimizing the total radiation every year," said Shepherd.

"Everything is getting bigger and heavier with more shielding so you’re further from the radiation while working with it," he added.

Cobalt-60 also has a range of applications beyond radiotherapy. "There are 30-plus standards laboratories around the world that use Cobalt-60 as a radiation standard for calibration of instruments," said Shepherd. It is also used for university research, food sterilization, and even insect sterilization — which Shepherd calls the second most common use of the radioactive material.

"We built an irradiator for a new facility in Burkina Faso, and will be sterilizing tse tse flies," said Shepherd. "They spread a very bad disease in Africa and this procedure releases sterile males to control populations."

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