{"id":242623,"date":"2026-08-13T01:23:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:23:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/scientists-detect-a-nuclear-reactors-ghostly-signal-after-shutdown"},"modified":"2026-08-13T01:23:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T06:23:28","slug":"scientists-detect-a-nuclear-reactors-ghostly-signal-after-shutdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/scientists-detect-a-nuclear-reactors-ghostly-signal-after-shutdown","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Detect a Nuclear Reactor\u2019s Ghostly Signal After Shutdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-detect-a-nuclear-reactors-ghostly-signal-after-shutdown.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Antineutrinos from residual radioactive decay can reveal activity inside nuclear reactors even after they have been shut down.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>A nuclear reactor does not become completely silent when it shuts down. Long after power production stops, radioactive, long-lived fission products continue decaying for months or years, releasing a faint stream of particles called antineutrinos. (Anti)neutrinos are the lightest and among the most elusive particles known in the Universe, passing through reactor structures and shielding with little obstruction.<\/p>\n<p>The Double Chooz collaboration has now directly measured this lingering antineutrino emission for the first time. Led by Anthony Onillon and Thierry Lasserre of the Max-Planck-Institut f\u00fcr Kernphysik (MPIK) in Heidelberg, Germany, the research was recently published in <em><i>Physical Review Letters<\/i><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Antineutrinos from residual radioactive decay can reveal activity inside nuclear reactors even after they have been shut down. A nuclear reactor does not become completely silent when it shuts down. Long after power production stops, radioactive, long-lived fission products continue decaying for months or years, releasing a faint stream of particles called antineutrinos. (Anti)neutrinos are [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242623","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}