Large quantity production of new radioisotopes

Nuclear medicine uses radiation to obtain information on the functioning of certain organs and to treat diseases (therapy). The diagnosis constitutes 90% of the nuclear medicine procedures, being the Technetium 99m the radioisotope used in 80% of the medical procedures. At the same time, the use of radioisotopes for therapy it is not very common, and has many opportunities for growth. In this sense, there were identified several new multipurpose radioisotopes with increasing demand in the last years. From several number of potential radioisotopes analyzed, Y-90, Lu-177 (carrier added and no carrier added), Re-188 and Re-186 were selected, taking into account as selection criteria: physical factors, future demand forecast, economic factors, investment and development grade. In this work, different possible routes of production in nuclear research reactors were analyzed for the selected radioisotopes. (author)