{"id":243892,"date":"2026-09-10T21:07:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/ultra-cold-quantum-sensors-cut-x-ray-uncertainty-improving-nuclear-material-assessments"},"modified":"2026-09-10T21:07:53","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T02:07:53","slug":"ultra-cold-quantum-sensors-cut-x-ray-uncertainty-improving-nuclear-material-assessments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/ultra-cold-quantum-sensors-cut-x-ray-uncertainty-improving-nuclear-material-assessments","title":{"rendered":"Ultra-cold quantum sensors cut X-ray uncertainty, improving nuclear material assessments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ultra-cold-quantum-sensors-cut-x-ray-uncertainty-improving-nuclear-material-assessments.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To monitor the amount and type of nuclear material at power plants and weapons facilities, scientists look for a special signal\u2014the unique pattern of gamma rays emitted by specific radioactive elements. However, some of these elements also emit X-rays in the same energy range as the gamma-ray emissions, masking the signal and making nuclear stockpiles harder to assess.<\/p>\n<p>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. This achievement allows scientists to filter out the X-ray background noise so they can more precisely evaluate the accumulation of nuclear materials.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur measurements support international nuclear safeguards by enabling more precise accounting of material in nuclear facilities,\u201d said Jonathan Dean, a physicist at NIST and the University of Colorado Boulder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To monitor the amount and type of nuclear material at power plants and weapons facilities, scientists look for a special signal\u2014the unique pattern of gamma rays emitted by specific radioactive elements. However, some of these elements also emit X-rays in the same energy range as the gamma-ray emissions, masking the signal and making nuclear stockpiles [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243892","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=243892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243892\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}