Indonesia's current status for conversion of Mo-99 production to LEU fission

Indonesia has a conversion program from HEU to LEU for producing Mo-99 from LEU foil target. Limited and restricted row material of HEU is the basic reasons to have conversion program in producing Mo-99 from LEU fission. The substitution of low-enriched uranium (LEU) metal foils for the HEU UO2 used in current target designs will be applied for production of Mo-99 Indonesia commercially. Batan has a joint research project with ANL to develop LEU-metal-foil target fabrication. Presented here is the current status of the experiment of foil fabrication using depleted uranium metal. The program of HEU will be reviewed as a background of the conversion program, and discussion will be focused on experiment results of foil target fabrication. The results show that foil targets resulted from the rolling has good characteristics. The surface of the foil is very smooth, and the grain has random orientation after heat treatment and quenching. Foil targets are fabricated from Ni foil-wrapped-DU foil inserted in between two concentric aluminum tubes, and the ends of the tubes are welded. Testing is conducted to assure that there is no leakage in the welded tubes. (author)