Advances in

Alpha emitting radionuclides with medically relevant half-lives are interesting for treatment of tumors and other diseases because they deposit large amounts of energy close to the location of the radioisotope. Researchers at the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University are developing a program to produce 211At, an alpha emitter with a medically relevant half-life. The properties of 211At make it a great candidate for targeted alpha therapy for cancer due to its short half-life (7.2 h). Astatine-211 has now been produced multiple times and reliability of this process is being improved

Ca-48+Bk-249 Fusion Reaction Leading to Element Z=117: Long-Lived alpha-Decaying (270)Db and Discovery of Lr-266

[Introduction] The superheavy element with atomic number Z ¼ 117 was produced as an evaporation residue in the 48 Ca þ 249 Bk fusion reaction at the gas-filled recoil separator TASCA at GSI Darmstadt, Germany. The radioactive decay of evaporation residues and their α -decay products was studied using a detection setup that allowed measuring decays of single atomic nuclei with half-lives between sub- μ s and a few days. Two decay chains comprising seven α decays and a spontaneous fission each were identified and are assigned to the isotope 294 117 and its decay products. A hitherto unknown α -decay branch in 270 Db ( Z ¼ 105 ) was observed, which populated the new isotope 266 Lr ( Z ¼ 103 ). The identification of the long-lived ( T 1 = 2 ¼ 1 . 0 þ 1 . 9 − 0 . 4 h) α -emitter 270 Db marks an important step towards the observation of even more long-lived nuclei of superheavy elements located on an “ island of stability. ”peerReviewe

Search for elements 119 and 120

A search for production of the superheavy elements with atomic numbers 119 and 120 was performed in the 50Ti+249Bk and 50Ti+249Cf fusion-evaporation reactions, respectively, at the gas-filled recoil separator TASCA at GSI Darmstadt, Germany. Over four months of irradiation, the 249Bk target partially decayed into 249Cf, which allowed for a simultaneous search for both elements. Neither was detected at cross-section sensitivity levels of 65 and 200 fb for the 50Ti+249Bk and 50Ti+249Cf reactions, respectively, at a midtarget beam energy of Elab=281.5 MeV. The nonobservation of elements 119 and 120 is discussed within the concept of fusion-evaporation reactions including various theoretical predictions on the fission-barrier heights of superheavy nuclei in the region of the island of stability