Fabrication and characterization of high-density MoO pellets

Nishikata, Kaori; Kimura, Akihiro; Shiina, Takayuki*; Ota, Akio*; Tanase, Masakazu*; Tsuchiya, Kunihiko

Proceedings of 2012 Powder Metallurgy World Congress & Exhibition (PM 2012) (CD-ROM), 8 Pages, 2013/02

The renewed Japan Materials Testing Reactor (JMTR) will be started from 2012, and it is expected to contribute to many nuclear fields. Especially, in case of Japan, the supplying of Mo depends on imports from foreign countries. Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) has a plan to produce Mo, which is the parent nuclide of radiopharmaceutical Tc, and JAEA has performed the R&D for Mo production by (n,) method in JMTR. Generally, molybdenum oxide (MoO) is the most popular chemical form as irradiation target for the Mo production. However, the Mo production capacity is low because of low (n,) cross section and isotope composition of Mo in Mo. Thus, it is necessary to fabricate the MoO pellets with high density for the increase of the Mo production amount. In this study, MoO pellets fabricated by a plasma activated sintering were developed and characterization of MoO pellets was carried out.