Harvesting 88Zr from heavy-ion beam irradiated tungsten at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

Tungsten is a commonly used material at many heavy-ion beam facilities, and it often becomes activated due to interactions with a beam. Many of the activation products are useful in basic and applied sciences if they can be recovered efficiently. In order to develop the radiochemistry for harvesting group (IV) elements from irradiated tungsten, a heavy-ion beam containing 88Zr was embedded into a stack of tungsten foils at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and a separation methodology was devised to recover the 88Zr. The foils were dissolved in 30% hydrogen peroxide, and the 88Zr was chemically purified from the tungsten matrix and from other co-implanted radionuclides (such as 85Sr and 88Y) using strong cation-exchange (AG MP-50) chromatographic resin in sulfuric acid media. The procedure provided 88Zr in approximately 60 mL 0.5 M sulfuric acid with no detectable radio-impurities. The overall recovery yield for 88Zr was (92.3 ± 1.2)%. This proof-of-concept experiment has facilitated the development of methodologies to harvest from tungsten and tungsten-alloy parts that are regularly irradiated at heavy-ion beam facilities.

Solid-phase isotope harvesting of 88Zr from a radioactive ion beam facility.

During routine operation of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), radionuclides will accumulate in both the aqueous beam dump and along the beamline in the process of beam purification. These byproduct radionuclides, many of which are far from stability, can be collected and purified for use in other scientific applications in a process called isotope harvesting. In this work, the viability of 88Zr harvesting from solid components was investigated at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. A secondary 88Zr beam was stopped in a series of collectors comprised of Al, Cu, W, and Au foils. This work details irradiation of the collector foils and the subsequent radiochemical processing to isolate the deposited 88Zr (and its daughter 88Y) from them. Total average recovery from the Al, Cu, and Au collector foils was (91.3 ± 8.9) % for 88Zr and (95.0 ± 5.8) % for 88Y, respectively, which is over three times higher recovery than in a previous aqueous-phase harvesting experiment. The utility of solid-phase isotope harvesting to access elements such as Zr that readily hydrolyze in near-neutral pH aqueous conditions has been demonstrated for application to harvesting from solid components at FRIB.