Many radioisotopes with particular nuclear, physical, and biological properties have been proposed for applications in medicine, stockpile stewardship and fundamental research. Unfortunately, some of these radioisotopes are difficult to produce in the quantity or purity needed for practical applications using traditional production methods at facilities with cyclotrons and nuclear reactors. In particular, the neutron-induced cross sections for many radioisotopes important for nuclear astrophysics and national-security applications remain unmeasured, which leave gaps in the reaction networks. Therefore, developing new routes for obtaining relevant quantities of these rare radioisotopes is necessary in order to fill these gaps. Recently, isotope harvesting from radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities has been investigated as a potential new pathway to supply these needed radioisotopes. In order to develop techniques for harvesting isotopes from RIBs, a series of experiments were carried out at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. In this work, 48V was collected from an aqueous beam stop and separated from a mixture of secondary-beam ions and unwanted fragmentation radioisotopes. A cocktail beam of secondary ions created by the spallation reaction of a 58Ni secondary beam was stopped in an aqueous target cell. After collection and sample characterization, 48V was separated from primary beam ions and secondary beam radioisotopes using cation exchange chromatography. The overall extraction efficiency from the aqueous solution was 36.9%, and the isolated 48V had a radiochemical purity of 99.9%. These data indicate that harvesting large quantities of 48V at the future Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, where isotope production is expected to be several orders of magnitude larger, should be feasible, and may allow the fabrication of radioactive targets that can be used to experimentally determine neutron-induced reaction cross sections. This approach can provide research quantities of isotopes currently unavailable at conventional facilities.

Harvesting 48V at a radioactive ion beam facility

255th National Meeting (2018)

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