LARAMED Facility Status Report

Albeit the unexpected pandemic situation due to COVID19 has severely limited the working activities at LNL since March 2020 for the rest of year, advances in setting up the new LARAMED research facility, as well as the installation of plants dedicated to related laboratories, have anyway continued, although at a lower swiftness, following the scheduled program. The LARAMED (LAboratory of RAdioisotopes for MEDicine) facility indeed aims at becoming an international research center, now being established at LNL in the framework of SPES project, which will be dedicated not only to perform fundamental nuclear physics studies but also to seek for innovative applications of nuclear physics to medicine [1]. The LARAMED facility, will make use of the high-performance BEST 70p proton cyclotron (35-70 MeV, up to 750 µA) already installed and commissioned in the central underground vault of SPES building, to focus research on novel radionuclides that could play a key role in improving approaches in patients' treatment and clinical research purposes. Moreover, to seek alternative, accelerator-driven, nuclear reaction routes, for both conventional and novel radionuclides currently unavailable, by exploring new routes with dedicated nuclear cross section measurements [2]. In parallel with the construction of the research infrastructure (including irradiation bunkers as well as radiochemistry and targets production laboratories with dedicated equipment), which has reached a good level of completion but anyway yet to become fully operational, the LARAMED team is being involved since years (in the framework of INFN CSN3/CSN5-funded experimental programs) in different cyclotron-driven production research lines of either conventional or emerging radionuclides, as well as in R&D on related technological aspects. Details on both the past activities carried by the LARAMED group and the status of current research lines, may be found, either in former editions of Annual Report, or in other contributions submitted to this Annual Report. What follows is a concise update report on the achievements held in the last year about the construction of primary infrastructure.