Status of development on Mo production technologies in JMTR

Inaba, Yoshitomo  ; Iimura, Koichi ; Hosokawa, Jinsaku; Izumo, Hironobu; Hori, Naohiko ; Ishitsuka, Etsuo   

The Japan Materials Testing Reactor (JMTR) is now under refurbishment, and the operation of the new JMTR will start in FY 2011. The new JMTR has a plan to produce Mo, which is the parent nuclide of Tc, and two Mo production technologies have been developed: one is a solid irradiation method, and the other is a solution irradiation method. In this paper, the present status of the development on the Mo production technologies with the solid and solution irradiation methods was described. In the solid irradiation method, it was found that JMTR can provide about 20% of the Mo imported into Japan. In the solution irradiation method, the fundamental characteristics of the aqueous molybdate solutions selected as candidates for the irradiation target were cleared by the -ray irradiation test.