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Reimagining nuclear materials for the future of medicine
Nuclear medicine has come a long way since Henri Becquerel first observed the penetrating energy of radioactive materials in 1896. Today, technetium-99m alone is used in more than 40 million diagnostic procedures every year—from cardiovascular imaging and bone scans to cancer detection—making it the undisputed workhorse of nuclear medicine. That single statistic tells you something important: An enormous portion of modern diagnostic medicine rests on a surprisingly narrow foundation, one built around a small number of aging research reactors that were never originally designed for continuous isotope production.
D. Wootan, R. Omberg, A. Casella, N. Lahaye, B. Mcdowell (PNNL), W. Stokes (Columbia Basin Consulting Group)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 36-44
The accident scenarios that need to be analyzed within Chapter 15 of a safety analysis report may vary significantly between advanced reactors and the light water reactors that compose the current commercial fleet. In anticipation of identifying scenarios of concern and developing methods for their analysis, correlations may be made to calculations and tests performed in support of the liquid metal and molten salt reactors that have been operated previously within the US. In this paper, we discuss efforts made to compare Chapter 15 considerations for a proposed lead-bismuth cooled reactor to those developed previously for the Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) and the GE-Hitachi PRISM reactor. Comparisons were also made with Beyond Design Basis Accidents for FFTF.