b'Production of Scandium-47Purified radioisotopes enable breakthroughs for nuclear energy, medical for Potential Use as atreatment, and national security.Radiotheragnostic P rior to this research, producing large quantities and high purities of critical isotopes and short-lived, low-yield fission products either could not be done or required extremely expensive materials that have limited stockpiles available worldwide. INL researchers developed an innovative approach using high-energy photons that offers high potential for on-site and less-expensive production due to the broader availability of linear accelerators at government laboratories, TOTAL APPROVED AMOUNT:research institutions, and medical facilities around the world. Many of these new $1,060,000 over 3 years pathways can be designed to use readily available, low cost, high-purity target materials that produce more pure isotopes of interest when irradiated, resulting PROJECT NUMBER:in simplified purification processes that reduce the time to purify the isotopes and 19P45-028 minimize radiation exposure. For example, the new approach developed through PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR:this research to produce scandium-47 utilizes natural vanadium, which is relatively Mathew Snow inexpensive and virtually unlimited in supply as compared to other techniques. Using a natural vanadium target also avoids harmful gamma radiation from the byproducts CO-INVESTIGATORS: produced during scandium-47 production.Ariana Foley, INLJessica Ward, INL Researchers will expand into synthesizing heavy lanthanide fission products relevant Tara Mastren, University of Utah to the strategic materials needed for energy research and non-proliferation treaty verification. The production pathways developed through this research may provide COLLABORATOR: the only currently viable approaches for access to these rare isotopes.Idaho State UniversityResearchers at INL have developed and demonstrated many new, tunable chemical separation approaches that are extremely low cost, use commercially available materials, and result in significant breakthroughs in separation timelines. For example, one approach enables isolation of many key fission product isotopes from highly radioactive samples in under two hours, instead of one week or more using traditional techniques. This work has delivered significant improvement over current techniques in terms of time, chemical recovery, separation, and gamma emissions. The rapid nature, purity, and safety enhancements of the overall processes represents an opportunity for U.S. isotope manufacturers to offer on-demand and on-site rare isotope products and services in the future.Illustration of the photonuclear reaction process. High-energy photons are impinged on a target material (e.g., neptunium-237, radon-226, vanadium-51), resulting in the ejection of a portion of that nucleus to produce new isotopes (e.g., neptunium-236, actinium-225, scandium-47) of high value to a 64 range of scientific applications.'