The National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), in partnership with commercial entities and the US national laboratories, is working to address the need for a reliable domestic supply of ⁹⁹Mo for nuclear medicine while also minimizing the civilian use of highly enriched uranium (HEU). Argonne is working in collaboration with several potential domestic producers and LANL to conduct experiments that will provide important design data for ⁹⁹Mo production using electron accelerators. NorthStar Medical Technologies is proposing to use a metallic Mo target to produce ⁹⁹Mo via the ¹⁰⁰Mo(γ,n) ⁹⁹Mo reaction. Babcock and Wilcox Technical Services group and the Morgridge Institute for Research are each working on producing ⁹⁹Mo by neutron-induced fission of ²³⁵U in an aqueous solution. The presentation will briefly discuss the ⁹⁹Mo supply problem and then outline Argonne’s role in these series of experiments.

Argonne Physics Division Seminar Schedule