Miss Piggy, a californium-252 fission fragment source as a generator of short-lived radionuclides

Carrier-free short-lived nuclides are employed in many different fields of modern nuclear chemistry. The two main production strategies are either thermal neutron-induced fission of 235U or 239Pu at nuclear reactors or spallation neutron sources or charged particle-induced nuclear reactions at accelerator facilities. An alternative method is to use a spontaneously fissioning nuclide. A facility applying this technique (“Miss Piggy”) was built at the University of Berne (Switzerland). Californium-252 (252Cf), which has a 3% fission branch and a half-life of 2.645 a, is used for the production of short-lived fission products that are stopped in an adjacent recoil chamber. Short-lived nuclides are transported out of the recoil chamber using the well-known gas-jet technique. Over 100 nuclides have been identified so far and used in different applications. Since such a device does not require any large facility and is easy to operate it serves well the needs of typical university laboratories.