Preparing for Harvesting Radioisotopes from FRIB

The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) will be a new national user facility, funded by the Department of Energy Office of Science (DOE-SC) Office of Nuclear Physics and operated by Michigan State University (MSU). The new facility will have the capability to accelerate uranium to 200 MeV/nucleon and lighter ions with even more energy. FRIB will generate a host of new isotopes that could be harvested for off-line use. A feasibility study to harvest useful long-lived radioisotopes from FRIB is being conducted. The study will use current conditions at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Lab (NSCL) to quantify and characterize the production and extraction yields of six important radioisotopes. The relatively long-lived isotopes are 22Na, 67Cu, 48V, 85Kr, 44Ti, and 32Si. The radioisotopes of interest will be collected in an aqueous beam stop at FRIB. Modeling of the nuclear reactions present at the NSCL was done using the LISE++ program. The information from the modeled reactions is being used to streamline the procedures for isolating and extracting the radioisotopes of interest from the aqueous beam dump at FRIB. The isolation and extraction procedure is first being developed using commercial chelating disks for “cold,” non-radioactive, species. The procedure will then be applied to “hot,” radioactive, species before being implemented at the NSCL and, eventually, FRIB