Reactors as a source of antineutrinos: the effect of fuel loading and burnup for mixed oxide fuels

Abstract

In a conventional light water reactor loaded with a range of uranium and plutonium-based fuel mixtures, the variation in antineutrino production over the cycle reflects both the initial core fissile inventory and its evolution. Under the assumption of constant thermal power, we calculate the rate at which antineutrinos are emitted from variously fueled cores, and the evolution of that rate as measured by a representative ton-scale antineutrino detector. We find that antineutrino flux decreases with burnup for Low Enriched Uranium cores, increases for full mixed-oxide (MOX) cores, and does not appreciably change for cores with a MOX fraction of approximately 75%. Accounting for uncertainties in the fission yields, in the emitted antineutrino spectra, and the detector response function, we show that the difference in core-wide MOX fractions at least as small as 8% can be distinguished using a hypothesis test. The test compares the evolution of the antineutrino rate relative to an initial value over part or all of the cycle. The use of relative rates reduces the sensitivity of the test to an independent thermal power measurement, making the result more robust against possible countermeasures. This rate-only approach also offers the potential advantage of reducing the cost and complexity of the antineutrino detectors used to verify the diversion, compared to methods that depend on the use of the antineutrino spectrum. A possible application is the verification of the disposition of surplus plutonium in nuclear reactors.

9 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables

References in corpus (7)

• Sterile neutrino search at NEOS Experiment
• Measurement of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay
• Improved measurements of the neutrino mixing angle ${\theta }_{13}$ with the Double Chooz detector
• Experimental Results from an Antineutrino Detector for Cooperative Monitoring of Nuclear Reactors
• New Results from RENO and The 5 MeV Excess
• Monitoring the Thermal Power of Nuclear Reactors with a Prototype Cubic Meter Antineutrino Detector
• Observation of the Isotopic Evolution of Pressurized Water Reactor Fuel Using an Antineutrino Detector

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Improved Short-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Search and Energy Spectrum Measurement with the PROSPECT Experiment at HFIR
• Neutrino Detectors as Tools for Nuclear Security
• Antineutrino Energy Spectrum Unfolding Based on the Daya Bay Measurement and Its Applications
• Observation of Reactor Antineutrinos with a Rapidly-Deployable Surface-Level Detector
• PROSPECT-II Physics Opportunities
• Nu Tools: Exploring Practical Roles for Neutrinos in Nuclear Energy and Security
• Exploring Current Constraints on Antineutrino Production by ${}^{241}$Pu and Paths Towards the Precision Reactor Flux Era