EPJ Plus Highlight - Speeding up radioactive decay in ultra-cold metallic environments

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Published on 21 May 2026

A new framework aims to test whether embedding radioactive nuclei in ultra-cold metal matrices could accelerate their decay, and could offer a new route to managing nuclear waste

When cooled to ultra-cold temperatures and embedded in metallic surroundings, radioactive nuclei may decay at faster rates. So far, however, the mechanisms underlying this possibility have remained poorly understood.

Through new research published in EPJ Plus, a team from the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) and the Tor Vergata University of Rome, in collaboration with the Institute for Nuclear Research of (NASU) in Kyiv, has developed a comprehensive new framework for assessing the effect, and how it can best be investigated in real experiments. Their results could lead to new answers in fundamental nuclear physics and may even pave the way for new methods for accelerating the decay of radioactive waste into less harmful materials.

When a radioactive nucleus is embedded in a metallic matrix at cryogenic temperatures, previous theories have suggested that the presence of conducting electrons in the metal could modify electron screening: an effect where electrons partially shield positive charges from one another. In nuclei which decay by emitting positively charged alpha particles, this effect reduces the Coulomb barrier: an obstacle which initially prevents alpha particles from escaping the nucleus, and must be tunnelled through for a decay to occur.

In their study, the Italian–Ukrainian team carried out a comprehensive review of previous experiments studying this effect. Based on their analysis, they developed a phenomenological framework for predicting electron screening effects on the Coulomb barrier. Named Accelerated Depletion of Radioactive Waste in Metals (A-DREAM), their project specifically investigates whether the alpha decay rate of radium-226 can be enhanced at temperatures below 4 K when embedded in a metallic matrix.

The researchers also developed an experimental protocol for embedding radium-226 into a gallium–mercury alloy, ensuring that the radioactive atoms are structurally incorporated into the metallic lattice in a stable, long-term manner. Unlike more complex, accelerator-based systems, this approach offers a passive, low-energy route to speeding up nuclear decay, without any external particle flux.