Isotopes and Applications

Description

While the standard mode of operation at FRIB will be to produce a rare isotope beam for a primary user, the fragmentation or fission of the production beam will produce up to 1000 other isotopes that could be collected (harvested) and used for other experiments or applications. The potential applications of these harvested isotopes range from the determination of neutron cross sections for homeland security to kinetic studies of radionuclide uptake in biological processes. Longer-lived samples of the unused isotopes could be collected and used in an ion source for accelerated beam experiments at ReA3, ReA12, or other accelerator facilities outside FRIB.

The general areas of interest fall into 6 broad categories:

* Nuclear power (nuclear data is needed to optimize reactor design, safeguards applications, and for studies related to reprocessing or disposal of nuclear waste)

* Homeland security (nuclear data is needed for modeling of nuclear reactions, detection of nuclear material and other threats, and development and calibration of threat detection technologies)

* Stockpile stewardship (nuclear data is needed for modeling of nuclear reaction networks, similar to astrophysics studies, such as (n,2n), (n,gamma), (n,p), and (n,f))

* Medical diagnostics (development of new imaging and treatment technologies, kinetic studies of material uptake in the body, and the possible production of biomedical radioisotopes for diagnostics and therapy)

* Nanoprobes for materials science using radioisotopes (for example the use of polarized 8Li)

* Industrial and environmental tracers (for example, 7Be, 210Pb, 137Cs, etc.)

The harvesting Working Group addresses two general areas:

- The potential uses of rare isotopes at FRIB that fall outside of basic research in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and particle physics

- The collection of selected isotopes that could be used to prepare radioactive targets or samples for experiments and allow a limited multi-user capability at FRIB.

Conveners

The Conveners of this Working Group are:

Mark Stoyer, LLNL, mastoyer at llnl.gov [Point of Contact]
Dave Vieira, LANL
Lee Reidinger, Univ. Tennessee
Don Geesaman, ANL
Aaron Couture, LANL

Equipment Workshop Questionnaire

The Isotopes and Applications Working Group's Questionnaire for the February FRIB Equipment workshop is linked here.

For More Information

Scientific Opportunities with a Rare-Isotope Facility in the Unites States, http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11796
RIA Applications Workshop 2000, http://www.lanl.gov/orgs/t/workshop/homepage.htm