Investigation of production of main products and impurities in irradiation process of natural rhenium in Tehran reactor and comparison with simulation method by MCNPX

Considering the radioactivity of radiopharmaceuticals compounds, there are strict rules and regulations regarding their quality control aspects. One of the essential parameters in quality control is to determine the type and amount of radiopharmaceuticals impurities in order to ensure the prescribing of the correct dose. Impurity values are usually small, but these small amounts are also important and should be measured with high accuracy. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the simultaneous production of 186Re and 188Re with one target material and to investigate the production of probable impurities. To achieve the goal of this research, the work was carried out in two phases. In phase 1, a model based on the MCNPX code is designed to simulate target irradiation. In phase 2, the experimental assessment will be carried out using natural rhenium irradiation in Tehran research reactor. Both simulation and practical results showed that 186Re and 188Re can be produced with appropriate and nearly equal activities, simultaneously. Also, the amount of impurities is negligible compared to the main products. Our findings indicated that experimental data are in good agreement with simulation data (bias error less than 5%) and as a result, the simulation method is the powerful and useful technique to investigate different aspects of radioisotope production in reactor.