Bulletin of the American Physical Society
4th Joint Meeting of the APS Division of Nuclear Physics and the Physical Society of Japan
Volume 59, Number 10
Tuesday–Saturday, October 7–11, 2014; Waikoloa, Hawaii
Session MH: Isotopes and Applications |
Hide Abstracts |
Chair: Filip Kondev, Argonne National Laboratory Room: Queen's 4 |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 2:00PM - 2:15PM |
MH.00001: Development of proton CT imaging system for evaluation of proton range calculation accuracy Sodai Tanaka, Teiji Nishio, Keiichiro Matsushita, Masato Tsuneda, Yuki Aono, Shigeto Kabuki, Akinori Sugiura, Mitsuru Uesaka [Purpose] In treatment planning of proton therapy, X-ray CT image is generally utilized for proton dose and range calculations in a patient body. However, there is an error of the conversion from CT value to WEL (Water Equivalent Length), and it turns into the error of proton range calculation. Therefore, WEL can be directly derived by use of pixel value on proton CT (pCT) image. The purpose of this study is development of a simple and convenient pCT imaging system for evaluation of proton range calculation accuracy. [Method] PCT imaging system was constructed with a plastic scintillator and a cooled CCD camera, which acquires the image of integrated value of the scintillation light toward the beam direction. Experiment for evaluation of this system with 70-MeV protons provided by NIRS cyclotron was performed. The proton beam was irradiated to objects of water and other substances phantom with complicated shape. The pCT image reconstructed from the experimental data was quantitatively evaluated. [Result] Construction of pCT image of various objects was successful. The value of WEL factor of water was 1.0$\pm $0.1. [Conclusion] The simple and convenient pCT imaging system for evaluation of proton range calculation accuracy was developed and was evaluated by experiment using proton beam. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 2:15PM - 2:30PM |
MH.00002: First fission mass yield measurements using SPIDER at LANSCE Krista Meierbachtol, Fredrik Tovesson, Charles Arnold, Matt Devlin, Todd Bredeweg, Marian Jandel, Justin Jorgenson, Ron Nelson, Morgan White, Dan Shields, Rick Blakeley, Adam Hecht Robust measurements of fission product properties, including mass yields, are important for advancing our understanding of the complex fission process and as improved inputs to calculation and simulation efforts in nuclear applications. The SPIDER detector, located at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), is a recently developed mass spectrometer aimed at measuring fission product mass yields with high resolution as a function of incident neutron energy and product mass, charge, and kinetic energy. The prototype SPIDER detector has been assembled, tested, installed at the Lujan Center at LANSCE, and taken initial thermal neutron induced measurements. The first results of mass yields for spontaneous fission of $^{252}$Cf and thermal neutron-induced fission of $^{235}$U measured with SPIDER will be presented. Ongoing upgrades and future plans for SPIDER will also be discussed. This work is in part supported by LANL Laboratory Directed Research and Development Projects 20110037DR and 20120077DR. LA-UR-14-24830. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 2:30PM - 2:45PM |
MH.00003: Production of $^{64}$Cu and $^{67}$Cu radiopharmaceuticals using zinc target irradiated with accelerator neutrons Masako Kawabata, Kazuyuki Hashimoto, Hideya Saeki, Nozomi Sato, Shoji Motoishi, Yasuki Nagai Copper radioisotopes have gained a lot of attention in radiopharmaceuticals owing to their unique decay characteristics. The longest half-life $\beta $ emitter, $^{67}$Cu, is thought to be suitable for targeted radio-immunotherapy. Adequate production of $^{67}$Cu to meet the demands of clinical studies has not been fully established. Another attractive copper isotope, $^{64}$Cu has possible applications as a diagnostic imaging tracer combined with a therapeutic effect. This work proposes a production method using accelerator neutrons in which two copper radioisotopes can be produced: 1) $^{68}$Zn($n$,$x)^{67}$Cu and 2) $^{64}$Zn($n$,$p)^{64}$Cu using $\sim $14 MeV neutrons generated by $^{\mathrm{nat}}$C($d$,$n)$ reaction, both from natural or enriched zinc oxides. The generated $^{64,67}$Cu were separated from the target zinc oxide using a chelating and an anion exchange columns and were labelled with two widely studied chelators where the labelling efficiency was found to be acceptably good. The major advantage of this method is that a significant amount of $^{64,67}$Cu with a very few impurity radionuclides are produced which also makes the separation procedure simple. Provided an accelerator supplying an E$_{\mathrm{d}} = \sim $40 MeV, a wide application of $^{64,67}$Cu based drugs in nuclear medicine is feasible in the near future. We will present the characteristics of this production method using accelerator neutrons including the chemical separation processes. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 2:45PM - 3:00PM |
MH.00004: High quality $^{\mathrm{99m}}$Tc obtained from $^{99}$Mo produced by $^{100}$Mo($n$,2$n)$ using accelerator neutrons Yasuki Nagai, Masako Kawabata, Nozomi Sato, Kazuyuki Hashimoto, Hideya Saeki, Shoji Motoishi, Yuichi Hatsukawa, Akio Ohta, Takayuki Shiina, Yukimasa Kawauchi $^{\mathrm{99m}}$Tc, the daughter nuclide of $^{99}$Mo, is widely used for medical diagnosis. In Japan, about 0.9 million diagnostic procedures are carried out using $^{\mathrm{99m}}$Tc. $^{99}$Mo has been mostly produced using $^{235}$U in research reactors. Because of recent shortages of $^{99}$Mo, a variety of alternative production methods of $^{99}$Mo or $^{\mathrm{99m}}$Tc were proposed. We proposed to produce $^{99}$Mo by $^{100}$Mo($n$,2$n)$ using neutrons from an accelerator. The route is characterized to produce a large quantity of high-quality $^{99}$Mo with a minimum level of radioactive wastes, since the cross section of the $^{100}$Mo($n$,2$n)^{99}$Mo reaction at 11\textless $E_{\mathrm{n}}$\textless 18 MeV is large, and the cross sections of the ($n\alpha )$, (\textit{nn}$^{'}p)$, and (\textit{np}) reactions on $^{100}$Mo are quite small. Intense neutrons are available because of recent progresses of accelerator and target technologies. In the talk, we show our recent experimental results to obtain $^{\mathrm{99m}}$Tc with high-quality using $^{99}$Mo produced by $^{100}$Mo($n$,2$n)$ [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 3:00PM - 3:15PM |
MH.00005: Radioisotope Productions for Medical Use with Accelerator Neutrons Futoshi Minato, Yasuki Nagai, Nobuyuki Iwamoto, Osamu Iwamoto Various kinds of radioactive isotopes (RIs) are widely used in nuclear medicine for diagnostics and therapy. Since the RIs are not usually present in the nature, they must be produced by nuclear reactors and accelerators. For instance, $^{99m}$Tc, which is the most common RI used in diagnosis, is mainly produced by fission of highly enriched $^{235}$U (HEU) in nuclear reactors. However, use of the HEU is unfavorable in terms of nuclear security. Therefore, many methods without $^{235}$U have been studied in order to produce RIs for medical use; for example, thermal neutron capture, gamma disintegration, and proton induced reactions. We also have proposed an alternative method using accelerator neutrons besides the above methods. Technique producing high intense accelerator neutron beam as much as 10$^{15}$ n/s is being developed and RI productions with the accelerator neutron have been done recently. The major advantages of the use of accelerator neutron are followings. 1) A wide variety of carrier-added and carrier-free radioisotopes can be produced using the neutrons, because a charge exchange reaction of a sample nucleus has a sizable cross section of 50 to 500 mb. 2) High transparency of neutron allows us to use a large amount of sample to co-produce other RIs by putting other samples behind the main sample in the beam direction. In this talk, we will show the features of RI productions with accelerator neutron which we have ever investigated and found, along with numerical results of RI yields calculated with Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library (JENDL-4.0). [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 3:15PM - 3:30PM |
MH.00006: Pomeranchuk cell for hyperpolarized $^{3}$He based on the brute force method Seiji Makino, Masayoshi Tanaka, Kunihiro Ueda, Mamoru Fujiwara, Hisako Fujimura, Masaru Yosoi, Takeshi Ohta, Giorgio Frossati, Arlette de Waard, Gerard Rouille MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) has been used for the medical diagnosis as a radiation-free imaging equipment. Since the proton has been mainly used for medical MRI, usefulness has been rather restrictive. As an example for expanding the range of applicability, MRI with hyperpolarized $^{3}$He gas has been used for the lung disease. Here, ``hyperpolarized'' means ``polarized higher than the thermal equilibrium polarization.'' For producing a large amount of hyperpolarized $^{3}$He gas at a time, we have been developing a hyperpolarization technique based on the brute force method which uses an ultralow temperature of a few mK and a strong magnetic field around 17 T in combination with the principle of the Pomeranchuk cooling. The Pomeranchuk cell made with non-metallic materials of small heat capacity is attached to the $^{3}$He/$^{4}$He dilution refrigerator using a sintered silver allowing large heat conduction. After the sensors to monitor the temperature and pressure of $^{3}$He are calibrated and the Pomeranchuk cell is constructed, the system is tested. Then, the solidification of $^{3}$He and the measurement of NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) signals of $^{3}$He under the magnetic field of 17 T are carried out. The current status is reported in this talk. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 3:30PM - 3:45PM |
MH.00007: Measurement of reaction cross section in the target nuclear fragment reactions required for the high accuracy of proton therapy Keiichiro Matsushita, Teiji Nishio, Sodai Tanaka, Shigeto Kabuki, Yuki Aono, Masato Tsuneda, Akinori Sugiura, Kazuo Ieki Purpose: In proton therapy, positron emitter nuclei are generated by the target nuclear fragment reactions between irradiated proton and nuclei constituting of a human body. The proton-irradiated volume can be confirmed by measurement of annihilation gamma rays emitted from the generated positron emitter nuclei. Therefore, value of the reaction cross section is significant for the high accuracy of proton therapy. Experimental determination of the reaction cross section is the purpose of this study. Methods: Experiments for measurement of the reaction cross section was performed by use of proton beam of 70 MeV and 50 nA provided from the NIRS cyclotron. The proton beam was irradiated to CH$_{\mathrm{2}}$ target, and annihilation gamma rays were coincidentally measured with the detection system of BGO scintillator array. Results: Activity data of positron emitter nuclei generated from the $^{\mathrm{12}}$C(p,pn)$^{\mathrm{\thinspace 11}}$C, $^{\mathrm{12}}$C(p,p2n)$^{\mathrm{\thinspace 10}}$C reactions was acquired. The average value of the reaction cross-sections of $^{\mathrm{11}}$C and $^{\mathrm{10}}$C with 0-70 MeV incident proton was 73.5 $\pm $ 6.1 mb and 3.5 $\pm $ 0.4 mb, respectively. And the maximum value of the cross-section of $^{\mathrm{11}}$C and $^{\mathrm{10}}$C was 110.3 mb with 50.8 MeV and 4.3 mb with 57.4 MeV. Conclusions: In this study the reaction cross section of $^{\mathrm{10}}$C and $^{\mathrm{11}}$C was observed. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 3:45PM - 4:00PM |
MH.00008: Search for ultraviolet and visible rays from $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th Yoshitaka Kasamatsu, Yuki Yasuda, Yudai Shigekawa, Koichi Takamiya, Tsutomu Ohtsuki, Atsushi Shinohara Ultraviolet- and/or visible-ray emission from the $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th nucleus is indicated owing to its extremely low excitation energy of $\sim$ 7.4 eV. In addition, a drastic variation in the decay rate of $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th depending on its chemical environment is also expected. Although many experimental results were reported for the observation of the deexcitation of $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th, a consistent understanding of the deexcitation is considered not to be achieved. In this work, we separated $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th from its mother nuclide $^{233}$U and prepared $^{\mathrm{229m}}$Th samples with several chemical forms such as chloride, nitrate, and hydroxide. Photon counting was performed for the samples with three types of photomultipliers for ultraviolet and visible rays (4--10, 1.9--7.2, or 1.4--6.8 eV). In the counting for 1.4--7.2 eV photons, no significant photon emission was observed for all the samples. In the presentation, we will show the results including those for higher energy photons. [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 4:00PM - 4:15PM |
MH.00009: Development of the collection apparatus for recoil products for study of the deexcitation process of $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U Yudai Shigekawa, Yoshitaka Kasamatsu, Atsushi Shinohara $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U has very low excitation energy (76.8 eV) and decays predominantly by the internal conversion process. Because the deexcitation of $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U is caused by the interaction between the nucleus and outer-shell electrons, the variation of the decay constant depending on its chemical environment was reported. We are aiming to clarify the deexcitation process of $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U by measuring the decay constants and the energy spectra of the internal-conversion electrons for $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U with various chemical forms. In this work, we developed an apparatus for collecting $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U recoiling out of $^{239}$Pu. We evaluated the performance of the apparatus by using $^{224}$Ra recoiling out of $^{228}$Th. The collection yields of $^{224}$Ra were determined in various applied voltages, air pressures, and $^{228}$Th source shapes. Based on these results, we determined suitable experimental conditions for the collection of $^{\mathrm{235m}}$U from $^{239}$Pu. In addition, the detection apparatus for the low-energy internal-conversion electrons are under development. [Preview Abstract] |
(Author Not Attending)
|
MH.00010: Studies of Neutron-Induced Fission of $^{235}$U, $^{238}$U, and $^{239}$Pu Dana Duke A Frisch-gridded ionization chamber and the double energy (2E) analysis method were used to study mass yield distributions and average total kinetic energy ($\overline{TKE}$) release from neutron-induced fission of $^{235}$U, $^{238}$U, and $^{239}$Pu. Despite decades of fission research, little or no $\overline{TKE}$ data exist for high incident neutron energies. Additional average $\overline{TKE}$ information at incident neutron energies relevant to defense- and energy-related applications will provide a valuable observable for benchmarking simulations. The data can also be used as inputs in theoretical fission models. The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center - Weapons Neutron Research (LANSCE - WNR) provides a neutron beam from thermal to hundreds of MeV, well-suited for filling in the gaps in existing data and exploring fission behavior in the fast neutron region. The results of the studies on $^{238}$U, $^{235}$U, and $^{239}$Pu will be presented. LA-UR-14-24921 [Preview Abstract] |
Saturday, October 11, 2014 4:30PM - 4:45PM |
MH.00011: Performance of the fissionTPC and the Potential to Advance the Thorium Fuel Cycle Rusty Towell The NIFFTE fission Time Projection Chamber (fissionTPC) is a powerful tool that is being developed to take precision measurements of neutron-induced fission cross sections of transuranic elements. During the last run at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) the fully instrumented TPC took data for the first time. The exquisite tracking capabilities of this device allow the full reconstruction of charged particles produced by neutron beam induced fissions from a thin central target. The wealth of information gained from this approach will allow cross section systematics to be controlled at the level of 1\%. The fissionTPC performance from this run will be shared. These results are critical to the development of advanced uranium-fueled reactors. However, there are clear advantages to developing thorium-fueled reactors including the abundance of thorium verses uranium, minimizing radioactive waste, improved reactor safety, and enhanced proliferation resistance. The potential for using the fissionTPC to measure needed cross sections important to the development of thorium fueled nuclear reactors will also be discussed. [Preview Abstract] |
(Author Not Attending)
|
MH.00012: SPIDER Progress Towards High Resolution Correlated Fission Product Data Dan Shields, Krista Meierbachtol, Fredrik Tovesson, Charles Arnold, Rick Blackeley, Todd Bredeweg, Matt Devlin, Adam Hecht, Marian Jandel, Justin Jorgenson, Ron Nelson, Morgan White The SPIDER detector (SPectrometer for Ion DEtermination in fission Research) is under development with the goal of obtaining high-resolution, high-efficiency, correlated fission product data needed for many applications including the modeling of next generation nuclear reactors, stockpile stewardship, and the fundamental understanding of the fission process. SPIDER simultaneously measures velocity and energy of both fission products to calculate fission product yields (FPYs), neutron multiplicity ($\nu$), and total kinetic energy (TKE). A detailed description of the prototype SPIDER detector components will be presented. Characterization measurements with alpha and spontaneous fission sources will also be discussed. LA-UR-14-24875 [Preview Abstract] |
Follow Us |
Engage
Become an APS Member |
My APS
Renew Membership |
Information for |
About APSThe American Physical Society (APS) is a non-profit membership organization working to advance the knowledge of physics. |
© 2024 American Physical Society
| All rights reserved | Terms of Use
| Contact Us
Headquarters
1 Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3844
(301) 209-3200
Editorial Office
100 Motor Pkwy, Suite 110, Hauppauge, NY 11788
(631) 591-4000
Office of Public Affairs
529 14th St NW, Suite 1050, Washington, D.C. 20045-2001
(202) 662-8700