The Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) will be a new national user facility for nuclear science, funded by the DOE and Michigan State University. The facility, with an early completion date in ~2020, will produce intense beams of rare isotopes that will provide a broad range of new information about the properties of these isotopes. For example, studies will provide information necessary for a better understanding of the origin of the elements and the evolution of the cosmos. While the standard mode of FRIB operation will produce a single rare isotope beam for a primary user, the fragmentation or fission of the stable primary beam will produce many other long-lived isotopes that could be harvested and used for other applications. In many cases, these isotopes could be collected while a FRIB primary user performs an experiment, with no impact on the primary user.
The first workshop on Isotope Harvesting at FRIB, held in Santa Fe in 2010, focused on identifying long-lived radioisotopes that FRIB could produce for numerous applications such as medical diagnostics and therapy, homeland security, stockpile stewardship, astrophysics, fundamental interactions, nanoprobes for materials science, and industrial and environmental tracers.
The second workshop on Isotope Harvesting at FRIB was held in summer 2012 on the campus of Michigan State University and concentrated on experimental design considerations of isotope harvesting at FRIB. A critical review and summary of the 2nd workshop is available here in pdf format.
The third workshop held at Washington University - St. Louis in Summer 2014 continued to focus more specifically on what isotopes are likely within reach with the existing design of the FRIB production target facility and what is needed to harvest the isotopes at FRIB. Participants helped to prioritize the list of radioisotope applications and consider possible experiments that could have been carried out with the FRIB facility.
This, the fourth Isotope Harvesting Workshop will be held at Michigan State University on the 17-19th of August, 2016. We will summarize the current state of ongoing isotope harvesting projects around the world and focus on isotope harvesting needs at the FRIB facility that would allow the widest range of new experiments.
The workshop is funded in part by the US DOE Office of Science.