NIST-Developed Quantum Sensors Improve Nuclear Monitoring
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To monitor the amount and type of nuclear material at power plants and weapons facilities, scientists look for a special signal, the unique pattern of gamma rays emitted by specific radioactive elements.
Key facts
- For example, the isotope uranium-235 accounts for only 0.7% of the total abundance of uranium in nature but must be enriched to a relative abundance of a few percent for fuel and 90%
- Dean and his colleagues, including researchers from NIST, the University of Colorado Boulder, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Houghton University in New York and the Kastler Brossel
- Our measurements support international nuclear safeguards by enabling more precise accounting of material in nuclear facilities,” said Jonathan Dean, a physicist at NIST and the University
- In partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory, NIST scientists have installed TES detectors at three Department of Energy laboratories to monitor nuclear material at those sites
Summary
Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have measured the confounding X-ray emissions from plutonium, uranium and neptunium (a nuclear decay product of uranium) with unprecedented accuracy. “Our measurements support international nuclear safeguards by enabling more precise accounting of material in nuclear facilities,” said Jonathan Dean, a physicist at NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder. Dean and his colleagues, including researchers from NIST, the University of Colorado Boulder, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Houghton University in New York and the Kastler Brossel Laboratory at Sorbonne University in Paris, reported their work in Physical Review Letters. To make the X-ray measurements, the team employed an array of quantum sensors developed at NIST, which act as miniature, exquisitely sensitive thermometers.