Kinam Kim¹, Jong Hwan Kim¹, Tae Won Cho¹, Sunghwan Kim¹, Kyuhong Lee¹, Yong Jin Jeong¹, Jong Man Park¹; ¹Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute

Mo-99 decays to Tc-99m, which is the most widely used radiopharmaceutical isotope for medical diagnostic purposes. Recently, Mo-99 producers have been attempting to replace conventional highly enriched uranium (HEU) targets with low enriched uranium (LEU) targets by international non-proliferation policies. As a result, it is necessary to develop high-uranium-density targets with LEU to improve the Mo-99 production efficiency of LEU targets. Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) has been developing commercial LEU targets with a uranium density of 2.6 gU/cm3 and high-density LEU targets using atomized U-Al alloy powder. We successfully mass-produced uranium alloy powder for high-density targets through centrifugal atomization and fabricated high density targets with a uranium density of 3.2 and 4.1 gU/cm3. Thermomechanical treatment (hot rolling + heat treatment) was conducted to prevent deformation due to phase transformation in the targets.