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Radiochemistry a boon to medicine

Talk part of Seaborg Institute series

Although their attempt to identify neutrons as gamma rays did not succeed, Jean Frederic Joliot and Irène Curie eventually stumbled upon an important discovery in the field of radiochemistry: the process of artificial radioactivity. However, Joliot was banned from studying nuclear science in France after World War II because he was communist. This information was divulged in a lecture entitled "Nuclear and Radiochemistry: A Historical and Medical Perspective" as part of the ongoing Seaborg Institute Weekly seminars last week in the Technical Area 46 Auditorium.

The first part, given by Moses Attrep, gave a brief background of the development of radiochemistry and its various celebrities and discoveries, ending with the most recent dilemma involving disposal of nuclear waste generated by reactors. He then segued into Doug Bernig's part of the talk by giving an overview of the history of technetium. Bernig then offered an overview of the uses of a technetium isotope as a radiopharmaceutical, including the most recent research in various treatments.

Attrep has spent 43 years in the radiochemistry field, completing his undergraduate work at the University of Arkansas. His talk was a timeline of the various discoveries that are central to nuclear and radiochemistry, starting with Henri Becquerel's work with phosphorescence that led to the discovery of radioactivity and ending with Enrico Fermi's self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction and the Manhattan Project. Along the way he offered anecdotes about the scientists involved, including the strained relationship between Marie and Irène Curie and Fermi's discovery that neutrons interacted more strongly with uranium when he switched from using a marble table to a wood one. Attrep concluded with an explanation describing how nuclear waste is generated and current disposition methods. At the end of his part of the lecture, Attrep described the many unsuccessful efforts of people to identify the element now known as technetium. These efforts occurred before it was recognized that technetium was radioactive and did not exist on Earth except in trace quantities.

Bernig's lecture concerned technetium 99m, an isotope that is widely used as a radiopharmaceutical because of its relatively useful gamma ray energy, easy availability, and a half-life that is sufficiently long enough to stay within a person's body for the amount of time required for medical purposes. Some areas where the technetium isotope is used are in brain imaging, evaluating strokes and brain lesions, thrombus and infection or inflammation. However, as Bernig explained, there are still quite a number of possibilities to be explored in this field.

The Seaborg Institute, which is located in the Nuclear Materials Technology (NMT) Division, is a branch of the Glenn T. Seaborg Institute of Transactinium Science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The next scheduled seminar is at 10 this morning. The talks are "Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycle Technologies" by Deborah Bennett of Actinide & Fuels Cycle Technologies (NMT-11) and "Advanced Nuclear Fuel Cycle - Separations" by Gordon Jarvinen of Nuclear Materials Technology (NMT-DO) Division.

--Hana Binder

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