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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.
Hiroyuki Fukuyama, Hideo Higashi (Tohoku Univ), Hidemasa Yamano (JAEA)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1014-1019
An electromagnetic levitation technique performed in a static magnetic field was used to measure the density, surface tension, normal spectral emissivity, heat capacity, and thermal conductivity of molten SUS316L and SUS316L containing 5 mass% B4C. The addition of 5 mass% B4C to SUS316L yielded reductions of 111 K, 6%, 22%, and 8% in the liquidus temperature, density, normal spectral emissivity, and thermal conductivity at the liquidus temperature of SUS316L, respectively. Nevertheless, the heat capacity increased by 3% with this addition. Although the 5 mass% B4C addition had no clear effect on the surface tension, the sulfur dissolved in the SUS316L resulted in a significant decrease in the surface tension.