Analysis of Heat Loads During Production of Radioactive Medical Isotopes

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Over the last 40 years the improvement in medical isotopes has allowed for the effective treatments of manytypes of cancer through the continuous development of both new isotopes and new delivery mechanisms. ABKBiomedical is developing a suite of imageable embolic microspheres for the treatment of some cancers. One oftheir products is a new and unique method of isotope delivery directly to the affected cells involves the preciseand localized injection of radioactive materials within micro-sized spheres to a cancerous region. Theproduction process involves taking non-radioactive spheres containing suitable target isotopes and packingthem into a relatively small volume and then activating them in a nuclear reactor. Due to neutron and gammaradiation interaction with these spheres each undergoes volumetric heating from the energy deposited in theseinteractions. Depending on the materials, sphere geometry, irradiation time and neutron/gamma fields in thereactor, the heat deposited in the spheres may be significant, and possibly exceed the heat removal capacity ofthe assembly. In such cases the spheres will melt resulting in a loss of the batch of isotopes being irradiated.ABK Biomedical wishes to develop the irradiation protocols such as to maximize their production output. Thisproject will develop and tests new tools and methods for the simulation of such embolic spheres and attempt todevelop more robust irradiation methods where production can be maximized.