Session B06: Opportunities in Global Nuclear Science Industries

Applications of Accelerators in Nuclear Science

I will touch upon some of the highlights of the thirteenth international topical meeting on the applications of accelerators (AccApp'17), which convened July 31 to Aug. 4, 2017 in Qu\'{e}bec City, Qu\'{e}bec, Canada.~ I will focus on Photon Activation Analysis (PAA) as the bridge for the many applications of nuclear physics using accelerators. The basic equipment is an electron linear accelerator (LINAC) with an energy range up to 35 MeV together with a radiation spectroscopy laboratory capable of resolving the gamma lines from the activated nuclides.~ Due to their highly penetrating nature, high-energy bremsstrahlung photons can reveal information about elemental composition of samples of significant volumes. The high-energy photon interacts with the target nucleus and in the ensuing photonuclear reaction, a nucleon (proton or neutron) is ejected from the probed nucleus.~ Usually this nucleon is a neutron, as the Coulomb energy barrier will tend to inhibit protons from escaping. The resulting nuclide will be a proton-rich isotope of that interrogated element. In most cases, the isotope is unstable and this excited nuclide will cascade down to its ground state; usually through emitting several gamma rays, each having a characteristic energy ranging from \textasciitilde 100 keV to several MeV.~ Measuring these discrete gamma rays will ``fingerprint'' the nuclide.~~ In this talk, various applications of PAA, including environmental, biological, archeological, and forensic, will be reviewed.~ I will further present the PAA of airborne dust samples, lunar dust simulants, and volcanic dust samples. Additionally, the latest results of PAA on jade will be discussed.~ It will be shown that PAA can serve as a versatile and highly sensitive tool for identifying counterfeit gemstones.   

Advances in the Global Use of Isotopes for Medicine, Industry and Environmental Science

The topic of Isotopes is one of incredible importance and versatility with numerous applications in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, industry, agriculture, environment, safety and security and many more. Medical applications include nuclear imaging with Tc-99m (SPECT) and F-18 (PET) and therapeutic treatments with I-131 (thyroid), Lu-177 (pancreatic) and Ra-223 (bone metastases). Industrial applications employ isotopes in power generation, oil discovery and processing, food and waste product sterilization, border security, wear analysis and many others. Environmental studies explore rock, water, soil and sediment worldwide by examining the stable isotopic content. Scientific applications of isotopes include uses in detectors, beams and targets for material analyses and particle physics studies. Developing new applications and isotopes for scientific and commercial uses is an ongoing effort both at academic institutions and commercial companies. Manufacturing isotopes in sufficient quantities often requires innovative improvements to accelerator or reactor production systems. An example is Sn-117m which is an isotope with very desirable physical characteristics and applications in nuclear medicine. Historically, its use was severely restricted due to the difficulty of producing high specific activity product that is essential for its application. Recent advances in accelerator technology have now allowed this isotope to be produced commercially prompting its use many new medical products. One of the greatest challenges of supplying the essential resource of isotopes is ensuring safety, security and sustainability. An example is the recent worldwide program to convert highly enriched U-235 reactors to low enriched material. This fuel and target material is used to manufacture Tc-99m (and other isotopes) for life-saving nuclear medicine scans. The growing field of isotopes is a dynamic area for physicists and other scientists with a strong and rewarding future.   

Radiation Testing Electronics with Heavy Ions--The Best Way to Hit a Target Moving Ever Exponentially Faster

In 1972, when engineers at Hughes Aircraft Corporation discovered that errors in their satellite avionics were being caused by cosmic rays (so-called single-event effects, or SEE), Moore's Law was only 7 years old. Now, more than 45 years on, the scaling that drove Moore's Law for its first 35 years has reached its limits. However, electronics technology continues to evolve exponentially and SEE remain a formidable issue for use of electronics in space. SEE occur when a single ionizing particle passes through a sensitive volume in an active semiconductor device and generates sufficient charge to cause anomalous behavior or failure in the device. Because SEE can occur at any time during the mission, the emphasis of SEE risk management methodologies is ensuring that all SEE modes in a device under test are detected by the test. Because a particle's probability of causing an SEE generally increases as the particle becomes more ionizing, heavy-ion beams have been and remain the preferred tools for elucidating SEE vulnerabilities. In this talk we briefly discuss space radiation environments and SEE mechanisms, describe SEE test methodologies and discuss current and future challenges for use of heavy-ion beams for SEE testing in an era when the continued validity of Moore's law depends on innovation rather than CMOS scaling.