Generation of radioisotopes with accelerator neutrons by deuterons
Nagai, Yasuki; Hashimoto, Kazuyuki; Hatsukawa, Yuichi; Saeki, Hideya; Motoishi, Shoji; Sonoda, Nozomi; Kawabata, Masako; Harada, Hideo ; Kin, Tadahiro*; Tsukada, Kazuaki ; Sato, Tetsuya ; Minato, Futoshi ; Iwamoto, Osamu ; Iwamoto, Nobuyuki ; Seki, Yohji; Yokoyama, Kenji; Shiina, Takayuki*; Ota, Akio*; Takeuchi, Nobuhiro*; Kawauchi, Yukimasa*; Sato, Norihito*; Yamabayashi, Hisamichi*; Adachi, Yoshitsugu*; Kikuchi, Yuji*; Mitsumoto, Toshinori*; Igarashi, Takashi*
A new system proposed for the generation of radioisotopes with accelerator neutrons by deuterons (GRAND) is described by mainly discussing the production of Mo used for nuclear medicine diagnosis. A prototype facility of this system consists of a cyclotron to produce intense accelerator neutrons from the C(d,n) reaction with 40 MeV 2 mA deuteron beams, and a sublimation system to separate Tc from an irradiated MoO sample. About 9.7 TBq/week of Mo is produced by repeating irradiation on an enriched Mo sample (251g) with accelerator neutrons three times for two days. It meets about 10% of the Mo demand in Japan. The characteristic feature of the system lies in its capability to reliably produce a wide range of high-quality, carrier-free, carrier-added radioisotopes with a minimum level of radioactive wastes without using uranium. The system is compact in size, and easy to operate; therefore it could be used worldwide to produce radioisotopes for medical, research, and industrial applications.