Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre


Cobalt-60 external beam radiation therapy unit

Cobalt-60 external beam radiation unit

The ACSRC operates an Eldorado78 teletherapy (external beam) gamma irradiation facility, which is the only teletherapy system in NZ dedicated to research applications. Decay of cobalt-60 provides highly energetic photons (1.17 and 1.33 MeV), which provide excellent dose uniformity for cell culture and small animal studies. The irradiator was loaded with a 220 TBq Co-60 source in May 2013. The achievable dose rate depends on the exact configuration, but is approximately 1-2 Gy/min as of 2019 (with a half-life of 5.27 years). Major applications are for radiation biology and chemistry studies in a cancer research context, but the facility is also used by a number of NZ research groups in a wide variety of applications.

 

User Charges

For internal users, $100/hour with a minimum charge of $100. The half-day rate is $300 and full day (up to 24 hours) is $500.

For external users, charges are 1.5-times the internal user rates.

 

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