Indonesian Achievement [Country report: Indonesia]

Since 1996 Indonesia has produced ⁹⁹Mo from HEU fission product mainly for domestic consumption. Due to limited and restricted raw material of HEU, Indonesia has a conversion program from HEU to LEU for producing ⁹⁹Mo from LEU foil target. The substitution of low enriched uranium (LEU) metal foils for the HEU UO₂ used in current target designs will be applied for production of ⁹⁹Mo commercially. Batan has had a joint research project with ANL to develop LEU-metal-foil target fabrication since 1992. Many achievements have resulted from the experiments. Design target has undergone several changes in design, materials and wrapping of LEU foil targets. ANL has developed several of LEU target design and fabrication, and has demonstrated Radio Metallurgy Installation hot cell in Batan for disassembly process to take out LEU foil from the target after being irradiated in the RSG-GAS BATAN reactor. Installed power of RSG-GAS is 30 MW but operational power is 15 MW. LEU foil targets were irradiated in CIP of RSG-GAS with thermal neutron flux 2.4x10¹⁴n cm^-2s^-1. Chemical processing was conducted in Isotope Production Centre hot cell for producing ⁹⁹Mo which will be used to produce ^99mTc generator. Batan has a license to use the process from US DOE. The experiment was terminated temporarily in 2001 due to September eleven accident. In 2004, cooperation between the ANL and BATAN was continued. In November 2005, ANL provided training on LEU target assembly to BATAN by simulation of Cu-foil as LEU foil. Then BATAN personnel demonstrated reassembly of 2 ANL LEU targets to replace Zn and Al foil barrier with Ni foil barrier in January 2006. In 2006, Indonesia began to manufacture foil targets using depleted uranium following the procedures established by ANL.