Program - Brookhaven National Laboratory

A. Guertin, C. Duchemin, F. Haddad, V. Metivier
Laboratoire SUBATECH, EMN-IN2P3/CNRS-Universite, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44307 Nantes, France
N. Michel
GIP Arronax, 1 rue Aronax, 44817 Saint-Herblain, France
The ARRONAX cyclotron [1], acronym for “Accelerator for Research in Radiochemistry and Oncology at
Nantes Atlantique” is a new facility installed in Nantes, France. It is a high intensity - up to twice 375
µA for protons - and high energy - up to 68.7 MeV - multiple projectiles - protons, deuterons, α particles
- cyclotron. Two beams can be extracted at the same time for protons and deuterons in dual beam mode.
ARRONAX has 6 experimental vaults among which four are connected to hot cells through a rabbit
system and are devoted to radionuclide production. Its main objective is the production of radionuclides
for medical use. Other developed activities are radiolysis and radiobiology using a pulsed α beam and
physics. On ARRONAX, a dedicated program has been launched on production of radionuclides for α
targeted radiotherapy. A great effort is put on production of At-211. At the same time, we have looked for
other α emitters that can be produced by cyclotron. Among them, Th-226 is of great interest since it has
been found to be a more potent α particle emitter for leukemia therapies than Bi-213 [2]. It can be obtained
via production of its mother nuclide U-230. Different reaction routes are possible for U-230 generation:
Th-232 (p, 3n) Pa-230 → U-230, Th-232 (d, 4n) Pa-230 → U-230 or via direct production, Pa-231 (p, 2n)
U-230. In this study, we focus on the use of deuteron as projectile. In the literature, only one set of data
[3] has been found. As optimization of isotope productions required a good knowledge of cross-sections
for the isotope of interest but also for all the contaminants created during irradiation, it deserves a new
set of data. We start on ARRONAX to measure deuteron induced production cross-sections from 15 MeV
up to 35 MeV using the well-known Stacked-Foils technique [4]. An originality of our work is the use of
monitor foils behind each target foil in order to record efficiently the incident particle flux and its energy
all over the stack. For Pa-230 production, our stack is composed of 40 microns Th-232 foils. Each of them
is followed by a monitor, 20 microns of natural Nickel, Aluminum or Titanium. Energy degradation is
obtained by the intercalation of a 500 microns Aluminum foil. Typical irradiation uses a beam intensity of
100 nA during 30 min. Activity measurements are made using gamma spectrometry. Our new set of data
will be compared with the existing data [3] and with TALYS code calculations [5]. The production yield
of the different production routes will be presented allowing the choice of the best one.
[1] F. Haddad et al., ARRONAX, a high energy and high intensity cyclotron for nuclear medicine, Eur.
J. Med. Mol. Imaging (2008) 35:1377-1387. [2] C. Friesen et al., Radioimmunotherapy using anti-CD33
antibodies radiolabeled with Thorium-226 or Bismuth-213 overcome chemo- and radioresistance in myeloid
leukemia cells, Haematologica 2009; 94[suppl.2]:329 [3] J. Rama Rao, J. Ernst, H. Machner Comparative
study of d- and 6Li-induced reactions on 232Th in terms of breakup and preequilibrium processes, Nuclear
Physics A448 (1986) 365-380 [4] E. Garrido, Production de radio-isotopes : de la mesure de la section
efficace à la production, PhD thesis, November 2011 [5] A.J. Koning, S. Hilaire and M. Duijvestijn, ”TALYS-
1.0”, proceedings of the international conference on nuclear data for science and technology, ND2007 (2007).
Session HC Nuclear Reaction Models
Tuesday March 5, 2013
Room: Empire East at 3:30 PM
HC 1 3:30 PM
New Approach for Nuclear Reaction Model in Combination of Intra-Nuclear Cascade and
DWBA
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