nuclear physics in poland 1996 – 2006

NUCLEAR PHYSICS IN POLAND – APPLICATIONS ANDINTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCHPawel OlkoH. Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics PAN, KrakówThe general public frequently associatesnuclear physics with the development of nuclearweapons or with the Chernobyl nuclear powerplant reactor accident. Less recognized are thenumerous beneficial applications of nuclearphysics and techniques which serve mankind intechnology, health care and environmentalprotection. In this short review, medical andradiation protection aspects of applied nuclearresearch in Poland, mainly based on accelerators,will be outlined.Table I. The statistical data on the number of employees, scientists,Ph.D. students and annual budget of some Polish institutionsinvolved in applied nuclear research. The acronyms of theinstitutions are explained in the text.Employees ScientistsPh.D.studentsAnnualbudget(M€)ICHTJ 270 84 21 4.5IFJPAN450 200 55 7.0ŚLCJ 60 18 3 1.1Historically, Warszawa and Kraków werethe first Polish centers where systematic researchin nuclear physics began at the beginning of the50-ties of last century. The current list is muchlonger and includes universities and technicalschools in Katowice, Lublin, Łódź, Poznań,Wrocław and several other Polish cities. The scaleof these activities should be viewed from theperspective of the budget available to universitiesand research institutes. As can be seen from datashown in Table 1, the average budget of threemajor Polish institutes involved in nuclearresearch in 2004 ranged between 15 and24 kEuro/year/ per employee. This is clearlyinadequate, being at least an order of magnitudebelow that available at most of scientificinstitutions in developed European countries.The Heavy Ion Laboratory (Polishacronym SLCJ) of the Warsaw University is a“User Facility” which operates an isochronousK max =160 cyclotron which delivers heavy ionbeams ranging from B to Ar with energiesbetween 2 and 10 MeV/nucleon. In 2008 a secondcommercial proton – deuteron cyclotron (E p =16.5 MeV) will be installed there for productionand research on radiopharmaceuticals for PositronEmission Tomography (PET) – see Fig. 1.Production of long – lived radiopharmaceuticalsfor other medical and life – science applications isalso foreseen. The SLCJ coordinates the work ofthe Warsaw Consortium for PET Collaboration (cf.Fig. 2), aimed at delivering fluorodeoxyglucose(FDG) for many clinics in Warsaw, using this newcyclotron. At present, some 20 institutions inWarsaw region expressed their interest inreceiving PET isotopes for diagnostics andresearch. This could improve the criticallyunderdeveloped nuclear medicine facilities, whereonly a few hundred PET procedures per year areperformed to serve the 38 million population ofPoland.CYCLOTRONCHEMISTRYCHEMISTRYQCFig. 1. The preliminary layout of the new proton/deuteron cyclotron and chemistry units in Heavy Ion Laboratory of the WarsawUniversity.33