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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.
Kazuo Takino, Kazuteru Sugino, Kenji Yokoyama (JAEA), Tomoyuki Jin (NESI Inc.), Shigeo Ohki (JAEA)
Proceedings | 2018 International Congress on Advances in Nuclear Power Plants (ICAPP 2018) | Charlotte, NC, April 8-11, 2018 | Pages 1214-1220
Since next-generation fast reactors aim to achieve a higher core discharge burn-up than that of the conventional ones, nuclear design methods need to refine. In this study, we investigated the effect that the analysis conditions exhibit on the accuracy of estimations of the burn-up nuclear characteristics of next-generation fast reactors. Suitable analysis schemes and conditions that maximize the estimation accuracy, while maintaining a low computational cost, were investigated in this study.
We performed core burn-up survey calculations under several analysis conditions. In the survey calculations, we calculated the criticality, burn-up reactivity, control rod worth, breeding ratio, assembly-wise power distribution, maximum linear heat rate, sodium void reactivity, and Doppler coefficient for the equilibrium operation cycles. The accuracy of the low-cost calculations was evaluated by measuring the agreements with the referential detailed conditions.