How nuclear data collected for medical radionuclides production could constrain nuclear codes

Abstract

The aim of this article is to give the status of nuclear data collected in the framework of the production of innovative radionuclides for therapy and diagnosis applications in collaboration with the GIP ARRONAX, which possesses a multi-particle high energy cyclotron, and to show constrains that can be put on nuclear codes. In order to assess the cross section of a given production route, experiments have been carried out using the stacked-foil technique and gamma-spectroscopy for a set of radionuclides of medical interest: photon (Tc-99m) and positon (Sc-44g) emitters for diagnosis, electron (Re-186g, Tb-155, Sn-117m) and alpha particle (Th-226, Ra-233, Bi-213) emitters for therapeutic applications. A systematic comparison has been performed between the results from the TALYS code (version 1.6) and the large set of data collected using different projectiles (proton, deuteron and alpha particle) from few MeV up to 70 MeV and covering a wide range of target masses. A better overall agreement with our experimental data has been obtained with a combination of models already included in the TALYS code differing from the default one.