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Reexamination of cross sections of the Mo-100(p,2n)Tc-99m reaction

Journal Contribution - Journal Article

The nuclear medicine community has been expressing concerns world wide regarding shortages of Tc-99m supply based on fission production of Mo-99 from highly enriched uranium (HEU) to prepare Mo-99/Tc-99m generators. As an alternative to reactor produced Mo-99/Tc-99m generator technology, the direct production of Tc-99m on accelerators is considered. There are a number of methods of using accelerators to produce Tc-99m and/or Mo-99. Direct production of Tc-99m on highly enriched Mo-100 target using cyclotrons is interesting for energies up to 20 MeV, so as to minimize the impurities from additional open reaction channels. To estimate the quality of the accelerator produced Tc-99m all the possible reaction routes should be mapped which could be potentially involved in this technology. However, a well defined excitation function for the Mo-100(p,2n)Tc-99m primary reaction is needed, in order to achieve acceptable good results in assessing the quality of the accelerator-produced Tc-99m by theoretical calculations. Most of the available experimental cross section data series for the Mo-100(p,2n)Tc-99m reaction have the same general shape while their amplitudes are different. A large difference more than a factor of two may, indeed, be observed between the lowest and the highest datasets values.

The aim of this study was therefore to get a new evaluation for the Mo-100(p,2n)Tc-99m cross section, through three independent experiments, aiming at a more confident estimation about the amplitude of the excitation function. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Journal: Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. Sect. B
ISSN: 0168-583X
Volume: 347
Pages: 26-38
Publication year:2015
Keywords:EXCITATION-FUNCTIONS; CYCLOTRON PRODUCTION; MO-NAT; TC-99M; MO-99; MO-100(P,X)MO-99; MOLYBDENUM; MO-100
  • WoS Id: 000350840200005
  • Scopus Id: 84922568478
CSS-citation score:1