We briefly review the motivation to search for sterile neutrinos in the keV
mass scale, as dark matter candidates, and the prospects to find them in beta
decay or electron capture spectra, with a global perspective. We describe the
fundamentals of the neutrino flavor-mass eigenstate mismatch that opens the
possibility of detecting sterile neutrinos in such ordinary nuclear processes.
Results are shown and discussed for the effect of heavy neutrino emission in
electron capture in Holmium 163 and in two isotopes of Lead, 202 and 205, as
well as in the beta decay of Tritium. We study the de-excitation spectrum in
the considered cases of electron capture and the charged lepton spectrum in the
case of Tritium beta decay. For each of these cases, we define ratios of
integrated transition rates over different regions of the spectrum under study,
and give new results that may guide and facilitate the analysis of possible
future measurements, paying particular attention to forbidden transitions in
Lead isotopes.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
