Fabrication Method of the Mo-99 Target with Advanced Planar Flow Casting

Mo-99 is a parent isotope of Tc-99m for medical diagnosis and very significant owing to its large fraction over 80% of the whole demand of medical radioisotopes in the all countries. Mo-99 isotope has been produced mainly by 235U which is extracting fission products. All the major providers of fission Mo have used HEU as a target material. But RERTR program that is nonproliferation policy encourages using HEU to LEU. KAERI has developed a processing to be able to produce a uranium foil continuously at one go. This processing gave an opportunity for LEU target using uranium foil to be commercialized. It correspond RERTR program. KAERI developed a new process of making foil directly from uranium melt by PFC. This process is simple, productive, and cost-effective. But the foil's air-side surface is generally very rough. A typical transverse cross section had a minimum thickness of 65 μm and a maximum thickness of 205 μm. This roughness could affect target fabrication and irradiation behavior. After issuing this problem KAERI launched a further effort since 2008. A new equipment was designed and manufactured in the industry in 2009. While the new equipment being test-operating, some occurrence of appearing problems appeared. Since 2010, Equipment was moved to KAERI, we performed many experiments using depleted uranium, and go get satisfied some results. We have got interesting results and manufactured uranium foil. A typical transverse cross section had a minimum thickness of 87 μm and a maximum thickness of 194 μm. The average thickness is 120 μm as a result of calculation