Alpha decay rate enhancement in metals: An unlikely scenario

Abstract

It has been recently suggested that one might drastically shorten the alpha lifetime of nuclear waste products, if these are embedded in metals at low temperatures. Using quantum mechanical tunneling arguments, we show that such an effect is likely to be very small, if present at all.

arXiv commentRevTeX4. 5 pages, 1 figure. Accepted by Nucl. Phys. A

References in corpus (2)

• Potential resonant screening effects on stellar C12+C12 reaction rates
• Screened alpha decay in dense astrophysical plasmas and magnetars

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