Harvesting 88Zr from heavy-ion beam irradiated tungsten at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

Samridhi Satija; Katharina A Domnanich; Jake A Bence; Chirag K Vyas; E Paige Abel; Chloe Kleinfeldt; Scott Essenmacher; Morgan Kalman; Wesley Walker; John D Despotopulos; Nicholas D Scielzo; Jennifer A Shusterman; Gregory W Severin

doi:10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110831

Harvesting ⁸⁸Zr from heavy-ion beam irradiated tungsten at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory

Appl Radiat Isot. 2023 Jul:197:110831. doi: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110831. Epub 2023 Apr 21.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA; Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA.
² Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, 10065, USA; Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY, 10016, USA.
³ Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA.
⁴ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA.
⁵ Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY, 10065, USA; Graduate Center of the City University of New York, New York, NY, 10016, USA; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 94550, USA.
⁶ Department of Chemistry, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA; Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA. Electronic address: severin@frib.msu.edu.

PMID: 37130469
DOI: 10.1016/j.apradiso.2023.110831

Abstract

Tungsten is a commonly used material at many heavy-ion beam facilities, and it often becomes activated due to interactions with a beam. Many of the activation products are useful in basic and applied sciences if they can be recovered efficiently. In order to develop the radiochemistry for harvesting group (IV) elements from irradiated tungsten, a heavy-ion beam containing ⁸⁸Zr was embedded into a stack of tungsten foils at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory and a separation methodology was devised to recover the ⁸⁸Zr. The foils were dissolved in 30% hydrogen peroxide, and the ⁸⁸Zr was chemically purified from the tungsten matrix and from other co-implanted radionuclides (such as ⁸⁵Sr and ⁸⁸Y) using strong cation-exchange (AG MP-50) chromatographic resin in sulfuric acid media. The procedure provided ⁸⁸Zr in approximately 60 mL 0.5 M sulfuric acid with no detectable radio-impurities. The overall recovery yield for ⁸⁸Zr was (92.3 ± 1.2)%. This proof-of-concept experiment has facilitated the development of methodologies to harvest from tungsten and tungsten-alloy parts that are regularly irradiated at heavy-ion beam facilities.

Keywords: (88)Zr; Isotope harvesting; Radiochemical separation; Tungsten.