Production assessment of non-carrier-added 199Au by (n,γ) reaction.

Gold-199 is a promising theranostic radionuclide for targeted radioimmunotherapy as well as for scintigraphy and dosimetry. 199Au can be produced in two methods in the direct and indirect routes of the reactor production via 197Au(n,γ)198Au(n,γ)199Au as the direct or 198Pt(n,γ)199Pt→199Au as the indirect method. This investigation described the development of a method for the reactor production of no-carrier-added (NCA) 199Au through neutron activation of natural Pt in Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) at a thermal neutron flux of 3.5 × 1013 n cm-2 s-1. Also, in this paper, the activity of 199Au has been estimated using the MCNPX code. In this case, first, the reactor core is simulated. Then the calculated results are compared with the corresponding experimental values. Moreover, two different chemical separation methods are investigated experimentally in details.

Investigations of proton and deuteron induced nuclear reactions on natural and enriched Titanium, Calcium and Vanadium targets, with special reference to the production of 47Sc.

47Sc could be used in SPECT imaging and also suitable for targeted therapy of small tumors. The excitation functions for the production of 47Sc and accompanying impurities via proton and deuteron bombardment of Calcium, Titanium and Vanadium targets were evaluated by three nuclear codes, ALICE, TALYS and EMPIRE. Therefrom, integral yields of 47Sc and also 46gSc as a main impurity were calculated. The various production routes of 47Sc were compared together. The results consistency with available experimental data was checked for each reaction. Based on the results, the 46Ca(d,n)47Sc reaction can leads to the high purity 47Sc with the moderate yield.

Investigation of the thermal performance of natCu target for 63Zn production.

The flow rate of coolant and the particle beam current are important when high beam current irradiations are intended for production of radionuclides. The beam current on natCu target to produce 63Zn via the natCu(p,n)63Zn reaction was investigated and the beam current was obtained more than 350 µA that is the maximum allowed beam current used for producing medical radioisotopes in Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute of Iran. In addition, the temperature distribution on the target under the different cooling water flow rates has been simulated based on finite element analysis program. The results show that the cooling water flow rate can be brought down to 1.5 L/min without the risk of melting of target material and boiling water.

Computational simulation of natUO2, 232ThO2 and U3O8-Al pills to estimate (p,fission) 99Mo yield in the modeled targets irradiated by CYCLONE30 accelerator.

99Mo is important for both therapy and imaging purposes. Accelerator and reactor-based procedures are applied to produce it. Newly proton-fission method has been taken in attention by some research centers. In the present work, computationally investigation of the 99Mo yield in different fissionable targets irradiated by proton was aimed. The results showed UO2 pill target could be efficiently used to produce 11.12Ci/g-U saturation yield of 99Mo using 25MeV proton irradiation of the optimized-dimension target with 70µA current.

Assessment of the direct cyclotron production of (99m)Tc: An approach to crisis management of (99m)Tc shortage.

Nowadays, the cyclotron production of technetium-99m ((99m)Tc) has been increased, due to the worldwide (99m)Tc generator shortage. In the present work, an improved strategy for the production of (99m)Tc, using the proton irradiation of the enriched (100)Mo was developed. The performance of this method in terms of the production yield, chemical purity, radiochemical purity, as well as radionuclide purity was evaluated. The average production yield was measured to be 356MBqµA(-1)h(-1). A good agreement was found between the calculated production yield and the experimental one. The radiochemical separation and total recovery yields of (99m)Tc were 92% and 69%, respectively. The radiochemical and the radionuclide purities of the (99m)Tc were 99% and >99.99% at the end of purification, respectively. The results of quality control tests (QC) support the concept that cyclotron-produced (99m)Tc is suitable for preparation of USP-compliant.