Preparation and Purification of High Specific Activity Radionuclides for Environmental Studies

Abstract

High specific activity radionuclides are a powerful tool for labeling a large range of inorganic and metallorganic species that are present in the environment at very low concentrations. In order to study the environmental impact of trace elements (TE) on the humans, it is of fundamental importance to carry out both in vitro and in vivo experiments on cell cultures and laboratory animals, with concentrations of these TE representative of the actual long-term and low-level exposures. In order to obtain these radiotracers in a very high specific activity form, it is necessary: (a) to optimize the production method by either charged particle accelerator (normally cyclotron) or nuclear reactor irradiation, (b) to separate and purify them from the irradiated target by chemical or physicochemical methods, without the addition of inactive carriers (i.e., the so-called no carrier added form), (c) to carry out a series of analytical and radioanalytical tests, in order to verify the chemical, radiochemical, and radionuclide purities of the tracer or labeled compound under investigation. Some production, separation, purification, and quality control methods developed for the two cyclotron-produced radionuclides 52gMn and 48V will be presented and discussed.