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Radionuclides for radiopharmaceuticals preparation are currently produced in cyclotrons, generators or nuclear reactors. However, none of these modes is free from serious issues, like: high costs of targets, production of undesired radionuclide contaminants, long and expensive separation methods and formation of long-lived radioactive wastes. For this purpose, novel methods are being developed for the production of highly pure radionuclides. The ISOL (Isotope Separation On-Line) method can be applied to produce high purity radionuclides of medium and heavy masses. ISOL is nowadays established as a major method for the production of high intensity and high quality radioactive ion beams for nuclear physics studies. The SPES-ISOLPHARM project at INFN-LNL (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare ’ Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro) aims to provide a feasibility study for an innovative technology for the production of high specific activity radionuclides based on the ISOL method. The ongoing experimental activities on primary and secondary (ion collectors) targets production, construction and testing of the selection and transport apparatus will be presented., Proceedings of the 14th Int. Conf. on Heavy Ion Accelerator Technology, HIAT2018, Lanzhou, China

ISOLPHARM is a branch of the INFN-LNL SPES project*, aimed at the production of radioisotopes for medical applications according to the ISOL technique. Such an innovative method will allow to obtain radiopharmaceuticals with very high specific activity. In this context a primary proton beam, extracted from a cyclotron will directly impinge a target, where the produced isotopes are extracted and accelerated, and finally, after mass separation, only the desired nuclei are deposed on a secondary target. This work is focused in the design and study of the aforementioned production targets for a selected set of isotopes, in particular for 64Cu, 89Sr, 90Y, 125I and 131I. 64Cu will be produced impinging Ni targets, otherwise the SPES UCx target is planned to be used. Different target configurations are being studied by means of the Monte Carlo based code FLUKA for the isotope production calculation and the Finite Element Method based software ANSYS ® for the temperature level evaluation. An appropriate secondary target substrate for implanting the produced isotopes is under study alongside with a system for its dissolution and repartition into radiopharmaceutical doses., Proceedings of the 21st Int. Conf. on Cyclotrons and their Applications, Cyclotrons2016, Zurich, Switzerland

The SPES project at Laboratori di Legnaro of INFN (Italy) is concentrating on the production of neutron-rich radioactive nuclei by the Uranium fission at a rate of 10¹³ fission/s. The emphasis to neutron-rich isotopes is justified by the fact that this vast territory has been little explored in the last years. The Radioactive Ion Beam (RIB) will be produced by ISOL technique using the 40 MeV proton-induced fission on a Direct Target of UCx. The most critical element of the SPES project is the Multi-Foil Direct Target. Up to day the proposed target represents an innovation in term of capability to sustain the primary beam power of about 8kW. The reaction products are extracted from the target by thermal process, ionized and injected into the re-accelerator stage. During the talk will be presented the recent developments on the fabrication, characterization, and on-line testing of carbide targets. In addition, developments related to the ion-source activities using the surface, plasma and laser ion sources technique it will be reported. Finally, will be shown the experimental test results on target remote handling., Proceedings of the 13th Heavy Ion Accelerator Technology Conference, HIAT2015, Yokohama, Japan