A start to finish story of producing a new radioisotope (205-Bi) at the University of Washington Medical Cyclotron Facility
Eric Dorman, Yawen Li, Gregory Moffitt, David C. Argento
University of Washington Medical Cyclotron Facility, UW School of Medicine
Oral Presentation
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A start to finish story of producing a new radioisotope (205Bi) at the University of Washington Medical Cyclotron Facility.
The University of Washington Medical Cyclotron Facility (UWMCF) provides many services to medical, industrial, and government research. In addition to patient radiotherapy, radiation effects testing, radiation biology — radioisotope production is a large part of our mission. We routinely produce 211At, 117mSn, 72Se, and 186Re.
In response to a DOE customer requesting an estimate of the cost to produce 100 μCi of 205Bi, we evaluated the production of 205Bi from natural abundance lead targets. A 4.1-mm thick lead target was irradiated using a 50 MeV proton beam at 2 μA for 0.5 h. The irradiated target was retrieved 27 days after EOB, and as expected, 205Bi and 206Bi were the only radionuclides observed by gamma-ray spectroscopy. A yield of 44.77MBq/μAh (1.21 mCi/μAh) was achieved for 205Bi. Discussed are: (1) Production route and contamination concerns; (2) Evaluations of particle type and energy; (3) Irradiation conditions; (4) Beam line modifications/configurations; (5) Target modeling/design/development; (6) Personnel exposure and safe handling; (7) Separation of 205/206Bi from the irradiated natPb target.