{"id":238918,"date":"2026-06-13T14:25:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/fusion-reactors-could-be-monitored-for-covert-plutonium-production"},"modified":"2026-06-13T14:25:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T19:25:44","slug":"fusion-reactors-could-be-monitored-for-covert-plutonium-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/06\/fusion-reactors-could-be-monitored-for-covert-plutonium-production","title":{"rendered":"Fusion reactors could be monitored for covert plutonium production"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/fusion-reactors-could-be-monitored-for-covert-plutonium-production.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n<p>Through new analysis published in <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.aps.org\/prapplied\/abstract\/10.1103\/2wr4-h8vq\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Physical Review Applied<\/i><\/a>, a team led by Patrick Huber at Virginia Tech has shown that an existing type of particle detector could be used to flag any such misuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons. Through new analysis published in Physical Review Applied, a team led [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,873,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}