Abstract
THE importance of iron-59 as a biological tracer in the human body has made it imperative to investigate methods for its preparation at Harwell. It can be obtained by the (n,p) reaction on cobalt. Normally, the cyclotron is used as a source of fast neutrons to avoid simultaneous formation of cobalt-60 by (n,γ) reaction; but that course was not possible in Great Britain. Consequently, we have developed a method for treating the active cobalt obtained by irradiation in the mixture of slow and fast neutrons available in the Harwell pile (B.E.P.O.). Since the cobalt activity is some three thousand times that of the iron, it is necessary to handle radioactivity at the curie-level in order to produce a few hundred micro-curies of iron-59. We considered that a solvent extraction procedure would probably be best suited for overcoming this technical difficulty.
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KENNY, A., MATON, W. & SPRAGG, W. Preparation of Carrier-Free Iron-59. Nature 165, 483 (1950). https://doi.org/10.1038/165483a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/165483a0
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