Tech Talk: breaking the power density world record.
How to irradiate a target with an extremely high power density, while cooling it with liquid metal? Join the presentation of our colleagues Gerard Oosterwegel and Yves Lenaerts on how they broke the power density world record! This SMART project of IRE is about producing the medical radioisotope Mo-99 for cancer diagnostics, without the need for a nuclear reactor. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A and drinks & bites.
Breaking the power density world record
In the framework of the SMART project of IRE, Demcon designs the challenging part of the factory in which the target is being irradiated with a 3MW electron beam and extracted to produce the medical isotope Mo-99. Conventionally, this most used medical isotope is produced in old nuclear reactors that produce radioactive waste and are unreliable, possibly delaying thousands of treatments. The newly designed factory uses an electron beam to shoot electrons on a matchbox-sized target, producing 2 MW of power; the LightHouse technology. More about this factory is shown in this previous Tech Talk. The current Tech Talk is about its little brother; mini-LightHouse.
Such a large and complicated factory is in general hard to realise without a proper demonstrator. We will show how a proof of principle setup is built, that shoots a 30 kW electron beam onto a very small liquid metal cooled target. With this extreme power density, we broke the world record. Besides the non-conventional design for such extreme conditions, integration in a jam-packed high tech nuclear bunker makes it even more challenging. In this Tech Talk, we will explain what these extreme conditions are and the key components that we build into the setup.
Register for the event
Date: May 19, 2022
Time: 3:30 p.m. (GMT+1)
Location: Demcon Eindhoven (Kanaaldijk 29, 5683 CR, Best)
Program:
3:30 p.m. – welcome
4:00 p.m. – introduction
4:15 p.m. – Tech Talk
4:45 p.m. – Q&A
5:00 p.m. – drinks & bites
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