Production assessment of non-carrier-added 199Au by (n,γ) reaction.

Abstract

Gold-199 is a promising theranostic radionuclide for targeted radioimmunotherapy as well as for scintigraphy and dosimetry. 199Au can be produced in two methods in the direct and indirect routes of the reactor production via 197Au(n,γ)198Au(n,γ)199Au as the direct or 198Pt(n,γ)199Pt→199Au as the indirect method. This investigation described the development of a method for the reactor production of no-carrier-added (NCA) 199Au through neutron activation of natural Pt in Tehran Research Reactor (TRR) at a thermal neutron flux of 3.5\u202f×\u202f1013 n cm-2\u202fs-1. Also, in this paper, the activity of 199Au has been estimated using the MCNPX code. In this case, first, the reactor core is simulated. Then the calculated results are compared with the corresponding experimental values. Moreover, two different chemical separation methods are investigated experimentally in details.