The development of uranium foil fabrication technology for Mo-99 irradiation target

The fabrication technology of uranium foils for Mo-99 irradiation target charged into a reactor has been developed to produce fission isotope 99Mo, the only parent nuclide of 99m Tc, which is an extremely useful tool for medical diagnosis. The uranium foils have been directly cast from a melt through the cooling-roll casting method, invented by KAERI. It has brought great improvement in productivity and process economics due to process simplification, and better quality, compared with conventional hot-rolling method. The design of planar flow casting apparatus is required to make continuous foils through the improvement of the fabrication process condition. The economical domestic irradiation target will be fabricated, contributing to the localization of fission Mo-99 and Tc-generator using LEU