Numerical Investigation of Th-229 Production in an Accelerator Driven System Reactor

Abstract

The expected increase in radionuclide demand for treatment of various tumor diseases has led to the investigation of alternative production routes to provide sufficient amount of medical isotopes [1]. In Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT), there is a present and future need for the Ac-225 and Bi-213, as the most promising alpha emitting isotopes, one of the limited ways to provide these radioisotopes is by production of Th-229 in reactor route [2][3]. The present study conducted to investigate the production of Th-229 to expand the availability of Ac-225 and Bi-213 in innovative nuclear reactor concept like Accelerator Driven System reactor (ADS)[4], which is a subcritical reactor and currently in development that predict to play an important role in the transmutation process of heavy elements and isotopes production. The possibility of producing Th-229 from neutron transmutation of Ra-226 are numerically investigated for simple model of ADS reactor consist of two zones, inner region with fast neutron spectra and outer region with thermal neutron spectra, and the subcritical core coupled with external neutron source. The calculations of transmutation behavior and mass ratio for the produced isotopes are conducted by using Monte Carlo N-particle Transport (MCNPX) code. This research was supported by International Center for Theoretical Physics and The Institute of International Education Scholar Rescue Fund. My deep thanks to colleagues from Institute for Safety Problems of Nuclear Power Plants, Ukraine who provided expertise that assisted the research. [1]E. R. Birnbaum, L. J. Bitteker, A. Couture, and M. E. Fassbender, “Ac and Ra-223 Production via 800 MeV Proton Irradiation of Natural Thorium Targets,” vol. 836.[2]J. R. Griswold et al., “Large scale accelerator production of Ac-225: Effective cross sections for 78–192 MeV protons incident on Th-232 targets,” Appl. Radiat. Isot., 2016.[3]S. Hogle et al., “Reactor production of Thorium-229,” Appl. Radiat. Isot., vol. 114, pp. 19–27, 2016.[4]H. Aït Abderrahim, P. Baeten, D. De Bruyn, and R. Fernandez, “MYRRHA - A multi-purpose fast spectrum research reactor,” in Energy Conversion and Management, 2012, vol. 63, pp. 4–10.