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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.
W. H. Doniger, T. Chrobak, K. Dolan, K. Britsch, A. Couet, K. Sridharan (Univ of Wisconsin, Madison)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 799-804
A static corrosion experiment at UW-Madison aims to demonstrate the ability to mitigate corrosion of structural materials at 700?C by controlling the FLiBe salt redox condition. The utility of an electrochemical cell potential called the FLiBe salt redox potential is investigated as a metric for predicting the corrosive potential of FLiBe salt. In general, a salt which possesses a redox potential that is small in magnitude is considered less corrosive, more reducing, than a salt with a larger, more oxidizing, redox potential. The magnitude of the cell potential, measured between a molybdenum electrode and a dynamic beryllium reference electrode (DBRE), is correlated with the introduction of common FLiBe salt impurities, such as chromium, iron and nickel fluorides. Corrosion samples were exposed to FLiBe with varying redox conditions: as received purified FLiBe and FLiBe which has been chemically reduced with beryllium metal. The salts were characterized using the FLiBe salt redox potential and spectroscopic analytical chemistry to elucidate the importance of controlling the salt redox condition during reactor operation.