Liquid gallium cooled high current accelerator target

Abstract

Radioisotopes are produced by irradiating enriched stable isotopes in a particle accelerator target assembly with a beam of protons, deuterons, or other charged particles exhibiting sufficient incident energy and current to induce a nuclear reaction. The target assembly receives a recirculating flow of liquid gallium to remove heat flux that would damage the target assembly when operated with high intensity beam currents. The choice of liquid gallium and its eutectic alloys, all liquids at room temperature, over prior art working fluids for the coolant system is advantageous by providing significantly increased heat transfer to prevent target damage, minimizing enriched material losses, thereby decreasing production costs, and realizing greater radioisotope output.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.