Development of high density MoO pellets for production of Mo medical isotope

Kimura, Akihiro ; Sato, Yuichi*; Tanase, Masakazu*; Tsuchiya, Kunihiko 

In the medical field, the radioisotopes are indispensable. Especially, Tc is most commonly used as a radiopharmaceutical. However, the supply of Mo in Japan depends fully on the import from foreign countries. JMTR has a plan to produce a medical isotope of Mo, the parent nuclide of Tc by the (n,) method and a part of the import volume can be covered of the home country. In this plan, it is important to develop the production method of the irradiation targets such as the Molybdenum oxide (MoO) pellets. However, MoO is low sublime temperature and it is difficult to produce the pellets with high density. In this study, MoO pellets were produced by two kinds of production methods. As a result, MoO pellet of about 70% TD was obtained by CIP and MoO pellet of over 95% TD was obtained by SPS.