Supplying isotopes for more than 40 years
Isotopes produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory are saving lives, advancing cutting-edge research and keeping the U.S. safe.
Los Alamos National Laboratory Isotope Program has a rich history of supplying isotopes for medical, industrial, and research and development applications for more than 40 years. Production of a diverse suite of isotopes from the LANL Isotope Program has worldwide impact within the medical field and throughout the scientific community.
To sustain this impact, we continue to develop new capabilities and explore novel production routes to make available a greater variety of isotopes. Our leadership in critical activities including high current targetry, fundamental nuclear data, and novel separations is essential to the DOE Isotope Program. To strategically position the LANL Isotope Program to be responsive to future needs, we support an integrated and robust R&D portfolio to pursue new opportunities, grow our capabilities and improve operational efficiencies.
Medical Applications
The development of new isotopes for application in medicine is an essential area of technical focus, a tremendous opportunity for workforce development, and a platform for multidisciplinary collaboration. Our primary focus is on the development of production methodologies to support the accelerator-based production of theranostic isotopes including therapeutic alpha emitters, (e.g., Ac-225, U-230), Auger emitting isotopes (e.g.,Te-119m/Sb-119), as well as isotopes for imaging (e.g.,Ti-44/Sc-44, Ce-134/La-134). Scale up of Ac-225 to routine, Curie-scale batches is a major ongoing focus between LANL, BNL, and ORNL. To enable future medical isotopes also requires the development of novel targetry, unique radiochemistry and purification capabilities, design of new generator platforms, as well as fundamental nuclear physics to establish unmeasured cumulative reaction cross sections and complex engineering solutions to enable bulk-scale production.
High Power Targetry and Radiochemical Separations
The Isotope Program continues to advance the frontiers of high power targetry, remove facility limitations on target cooling, and expand the IPF production capacity by understanding, shaping and utilizing the available secondary neutron flux available. We pursue robust radiochemical separations, including novel approaches to utilize expertise in inorganic chemistry to inform approach. The chemical challenges to address separation of the desired isotopes from large target masses mandate highly selective and scalable chemistries. The growing need for improved generators for long-lived isotopes and alpha emitters also presents unique challenges to address.
Fundamental Nuclear Physics Studies
We produce isotopes for unique cross section measurements to support astrophysics and fundamental nuclear physics studies. Radioactive isotopes produced at IPF are purified and manufactured into specialty targets for additional experimental testing. A related effort is a focus on the direct measurement of nuclear cross section data at IPF. This work is specifically aimed at filling in the gaps in available data to inform the community, identifying viable isotopes based on needs and production cross sections, and improving the existing physics models used to predict these cross sections.
National security applications are being supported through production of isotopes to meet a variety of emerging mission needs including environmental tracers and calibration isotopes relevant to the forensics community.
Committed to knowledge, science and the next generation of researchers
The LANL Isotope Program is committed to discovery that advances the Nation‘s knowledge base in the core science and engineering fields related to isotope production. The overall research program develops these underpinning needs through pursuit of nuclear data measurements, fundamental separations data, analysis, and modeling that enable future proof-of-concept production development.
Additionally, we are committed to fostering the skills for the next generation of scientists interested in these fields. Workforce development is a key aspect of our research program. We fully support LANL and Office of Science standards for fostering safe, diverse, equitable, and inclusive work and research environments that value mutual respect and personal integrity. Interested students, postdocs and academic/industry collaborators are encouraged to contact us (isotopes@lanl.gov) regarding our research portfolio.
The LA-UR number is LA-UR-22-20988