WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 -- The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards & Technology issued the following press release:
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. 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.
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 ac...