Credit: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy; photographer Jason Richards
From left, ORNL’s Rick Lowden, Chris Bryan and Jim Kiggans were troubled that target discs of a material needed to produce Mo-99 using an accelerator could deform after irradiation and get stuck in their holder. The trio concluded 3D printing the entire target assembly would solve this problem. They are shown with Kiggans holding a notional target design 3D printed in natural molybdenum.