Technical Resources

A wide variety of special and custom services are available at DOE’s isotope production sites to complement its radioactive and stable isotope offerings. These services are based on extensive expertise derived from many years of isotope research, development, and production operations, and our technical services teams will attempt to transform any material in inventory into whatever chemical or physical form that will make the researcher’s experiment successful.

Below are examples of special custom-order isotope forms and services offered by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL):

Technical Services (performed by ORNL's Stable Isotope Group)

Arc melting, casting, alloying, and drop casting

Arc melting, casting, alloying, and drop casting

Techniques used for the preparation of metal ingots and reclamation materials, such as foil trimmings, for further processing

Various custom targets

Custom targets

Various custom target forms can be fabricated such as foils, pellets, or and discs

Diamond abrasive wire sawing

Diamond abrasive wire sawing

A technique used to cut materials with minimal losses

Small high-pressure cylinder

Enriched gases

Transfer of high-purity enriched gases into small high-pressure cylinders

Evaporation of Ge onto Tantalum

High vacuum evaporation

These techniques use resistance, Rf induction, or electron beam heating to prepare thin films and coatings from metals, oxides, and other compounds

Scientist looking at metal foils

Hot and cold rolling

Processes used to produce metal foils from the millimeter to micron thickness range

Wire

Inorganic compound synthesis, metallurgical, ceramic, and high-vacuum processing methods

Techniques used to process stable isotopes into the desired chemical or physical forms to meet customer needs

Glove box

Ion beam and plasma sputtering

Processes used to produce thin films and coatings

Consolidated metal and ceramic powder

Metal and ceramic powder consolidation techniques

Processes include cold pressing, sintering, and vacuum hot pressing

Pulse Arc Welding

Pulse arc welding

This technique is used for joining metals

Pyrochemical conversion techniques

Pyrochemical conversion techniques

To convert rare earth and Group IIA elements from oxides to high purity metal via reduction/distillation

Metal rods and wires

Wire casting, rolling, and swaging processes

These techniques are used to prepare metal rods and wires

Radioactive Isotope Services (performed at ANL, BNL, LANL, and/or ORNL)

Person using manipulator in hot cell

Custom chemical and physical forms

Preparation of a variety of radioisotopes may be possible

Nuclear Medicine

Nuclear medicine

Providing radioisotopes and support for the development of diagnostic and therapeutic radioisotopes and clinical trials

targets in reactor

Target irradiations

Target irradiations may be supplied to the customer without processing