Large-scale production of lutetium-177m for the
177mLu/
177Lu radionuclide generator.
Appl Radiat Isot 2019;
156:108986. [PMID:
31786419 DOI:
10.1016/j.apradiso.2019.108986]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/05/2019] [Revised: 10/07/2019] [Accepted: 11/11/2019] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
In this work, 177mLu has been produced by irradiation of natural Lu2O3 targets at the BR2 reactor (Mol, Belgium) and the obtained data together with literature values have been used to theoretically investigate the production of 177mLu at different neutron fluxes, irradiation times and enrichment of 176Lu. The irradiation time (tmax) needed to reach the maximum 177mLu production has been found to change from 42, 12, 4 days with the increase in the thermal neutron flux from 2*1014, 8*1014, 2.5*1015 n cm-2 s-1, respectively while keeping the maximum 177mLu activity unaffected. The results of our calculations suggest that 0.11 TBq 177mLu with a specific activity of 0.3 TBq g-1 Lu can be produced in a short irradiation time of 4 days using 1g of 84.44% 176Lu enriched Lu2O3 and a thermal neutron flux of 2.5*1015 n cm-2 s-1.
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