Activities Study of Short-lived Radioisotopes with a Filippov-type Plasma Focus
Alireza Asle Zaeem · S. Mahmood Sadat Kiai · Mahmood Sedaghatizade · Shirin Adlparvar · Shahab Sheibani
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source · none found
In one page
A plasma focus is a simple, violent machine. A capacitor bank dumps its charge into a low-pressure gas, a sheet of current sweeps across the electrodes and collapses onto the axis, and for a few tens of nanoseconds there is a pinch of plasma dense and hot enough to fuse. Alireza Asle Zaeem and colleagues, at Khajenasir University of Technology and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, ask that pinch to do something other than make power. Add a trace of a second gas to the deuterium, and the deuterons streaming out of the pinch will transmute it. Their calculations model the Dena device, a Filippov-type plasma focus in Tehran, running as a breeder of short-lived radioisotopes: boron-10 struck by a deuteron becomes carbon-11, and nitrogen-14 becomes oxygen-15 — the two short-lived positron emitters that hospitals use for PET scanning. They work out the activities for capacitor bank energies from twenty to ninety kilojoules and repetition rates from one to ten shots a second.
Why it matters hereChapter 18 collects the machines that make fusion conditions in a room rather than in a reactor hall, and the plasma focus is the smallest and most-copied of them. This paper is a good demonstration of why that matters beyond energy: the same nanosecond pinch that yields neutrons is a compact, pulsed particle source, and if it can breed medical isotopes on a bench then the device has a second economy of its own long before it produces net power.
What it claims
01What a plasma focus is, in the paper’s own opening: a device characterised by a short-lived dense and hot plasma pinch, produced by radial compression and electromagnetic acceleration of the current sheet.Abstract, first sentence
Settled physics02The pinch has two useful phases, not one. Over a period of typically a few tens of nanoseconds it goes through a compression phase, which is thermal, and an expansion phase, which is non-thermal or beam-target — and between them these provide the conditions necessary for high nuclear reaction rates. The beam-target phase is what makes the device an accelerator as well as a hot plasma.Abstract, second sentence
Published and peer-reviewed03With an appropriate gas admixture at a desirable pressure, those processes generate short-lived radioisotopes, and the level of activity obtained depends on the design and operational parameters of the machine rather than on anything intrinsic — which is what makes the yield an engineering variable to be optimised.Abstract, third sentence
Published and peer-reviewed04The two reactions studied are deuteron-induced: boron-10 plus a deuteron gives carbon-11 plus a neutron, and nitrogen-14 plus a deuteron gives oxygen-15 plus a neutron. The machine modelled is the Filippov-type plasma focus Dena, used as a breeder, over capacitor bank energies from twenty to ninety kilojoules and repetition rates from one to ten hertz.Title; Abstract, fourth sentence
Designed, not yet built05The operating point chosen for the calculation: the admixture gas pressures of boron-10 and nitrogen-14 were each taken to be approximately five hundredths of the initial working pressure, with the device set at its optimum neutron yield regime. The isotope breeding is therefore treated as a trace addition to a machine already tuned for neutrons, not as a separate mode of operation.Abstract, fifth sentence
Designed, not yet built06What would settle it. The paper presents the results of simulated theoretical work rather than a measured activity, so the outstanding measurement is the obvious one — the activity actually bred on Dena, or on another Filippov-type focus, across that same range of bank energies and repetition rates, compared against the computed curves.Abstract, fourth and sixth sentences
What to watch
Read it · abstract
Abstract
Plasma focus devices are characterized by short-lived dense and hot plasma “pinch” due to the radial compression and electromagnetic acceleration. Through a short period of time, typically a few tens of nanoseconds, the pinched plasma goes through two phases of compression (thermal) and expansion (non-thermal or beam target) that provide necessary conditions for high nuclear reaction rates. If appropriate gas admixture at a desirable pressure is used, the processes can generate short-lived radioisotopes (SLRs) which the level of activities depends on the design and operational parameters. In this paper, the results of simulated theoretical works of two SLRs such as 10B (d, n) 11C and 14N (d, n) 15O are presented using a Filippov-type plasma focus “Dena” as a breeder with the bank energy ranges from 20 to 90 kJ at the repetition rates from 1 to 10 Hz. The admixture gas pressure of 10B and 14 N were taken to be approximately 0.05 of initial working pressure at optimum neutron yield regime. The results obtained are discussed.
Alireza Asle Zaeem, S. Mahmood Sadat Kiai, Mahmood Sedaghatizade, Shirin Adlparvar and Shahab Sheibani. Khajenasir University of Technology, Tehran, and the Nuclear Science Research School of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Tehran. Journal of Fusion Energy 28, number 3, pages 268 to 274 (published online 6 November 2008, printed September 2009).
(Abstract only — the paper is closed at the publisher and no copy of the body was reached or read; see the rights note above for the licence check and for where each claim sits in the abstract. The article is at doi.org/10.1007/s10894-008-9164-z. On this site, the modelling framework most plasma focus papers are measured against is at Plasma Focus Radiative Model: Review of the Lee Model Code; a large machine firing at doped and structured targets is at Foam target experiments with the PF-1000 plasma focus facility; and the fine structure of the pinch that does this work is at Filamentation in the pinched column of the dense plasma focus.)
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10894-008-9164-zPUBLICATION, CHECKED AT CROSSREF 2026-09-09. Published online by Springer on 6 November 2008 and printed in the Journal of Fusion Energy, volume 28, number 3, pages 268 to 274, September 2009. Note the volume: the batch note that produced this sheet gave volume 27, and Crossref, OpenAlex and Springer all give volume 28, issue 3. The year is kept at 2008, the year of publication online, which is the year both the registry record and this sheet carry. AFFILIATIONS as deposited: Alireza Asle Zaeem and Mahmood Sedaghatizade, Physics Department, Khajenasir University of Technology, Tehran; S. Mahmood Sadat Kiai, Shirin Adlparvar and Shahab Sheibani, Nuclear Science Research School, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute, Tehran. LICENCE, CHECKED 2026-09-09. The only licence Crossref registers for this DOI is Springer’s text-and-data-mining licence, which is not a reading or redistribution licence, and no Creative Commons statement was found. SOURCE NOT REACHED IN FULL. OpenAlex and Unpaywall both record the work as closed with no repository copy, and no green copy was found, so no text of the paper is reproduced here beyond its own abstract and none of the body was read. THE ABSTRACT. Crossref holds no abstract for this DOI. The abstract reproduced below is the publisher-deposited one carried by OpenAIRE for the same DOI, which is the abstract Springer prints on the article’s first page; it is given exactly as deposited, including its own phrasing and its quotation marks around the word pinch. Every claim below is located by sentence within that abstract, or by the article’s title and front matter, and never in the body of the paper. THE DEVICE. Dena is the Filippov-type plasma focus of the Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion Research School in Tehran; this sheet takes its name and type from the paper’s own title and abstract.
How to cite it
Alireza Asle Zaeem, S. Mahmood Sadat Kiai, Mahmood Sedaghatizade, Shirin Adlparvar, Shahab Sheibani (2008) Activities Study of Short-lived Radioisotopes with a Filippov-type Plasma Focus. doi:10.1007/s10894-008-9164-z
Where it sits in the curriculum
Fusion machines: pinches, focus devices and inertial drivers