BIOMEDICAL NEUTRON RESEARCH AT THE CALIFORNIUM USER FACILITY FOR NEUTRON SCIENCE

The Californium User Facility for Neutron Science has been established at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The Californium User Facilit y (CUF) is a part of the larger Californium Facility, which fabricates and stores compact Cf-252 neutron sources for worldwide distribution. The CUF can provide a cost-effective option for research with 252Cf s ources. Three projects at the CUF that demonstrate the versatility of Cf-252 for biological and biomedical neutron-based research are descri bed: future establishment of a Cf-252-based neutron activation analysi s system, ongoing work to produce miniature high-intensity, remotely a fterloaded Cf-252 sources for tumor therapy, and a recent experiment t hat irradiated living human lung cancer cells impregnated with experim ental boron compounds to test their effectiveness for boron neutron ca pture therapy.