The followinguses for californium are gathered from a number of sources as well as from anecdotal comments. I would be delighted to receive corrections as well as additionalreferenced uses.

Californium is radioactive and only available in very small amounts so its uses are somewhat specialist. Foils made from²⁵²Cf are used as a source of fission fragments for research purposes. Californium is a good source of neutrons. It can be used as a portable neutron source for the detection of gold or silver by on-the-spot activation analysis. It is used in moisture gauges for the determination of water and oil-bearing layers in oil wells.