Experimental Results from an Antineutrino Detector for Cooperative Monitoring of Nuclear Reactors

Abstract

Our collaboration has designed, installed, and operated a compact antineutrino detector at a nuclear power station, for the purpose of monitoring the power and plutonium content of the reactor core. This paper focuses on the basic properties and performance of the detector. We describe the site, the reactor source, and the detector, and provide data that clearly show the expected antineutrino signal. Our data and experience demonstrate that it is possible to operate a simple, relatively small, antineutrino detector near a reactor, in a non-intrusive and unattended mode for months to years at a time, from outside the reactor containment, with no disruption of day-to-day operations at the reactor site. This unique real-time cooperative monitoring capability may be of interest for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reactor safeguards program and similar regimes.

Accepted for Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Monitoring the Thermal Power of Nuclear Reactors with a Prototype Cubic Meter Antineutrino Detector
• Expression of Interest for a Novel Search for CP Violation in the Neutrino Sector: DAEdALUS
• Observation of the Isotopic Evolution of Pressurized Water Reactor Fuel Using an Antineutrino Detector
• SANDD: A directional antineutrino detector with segmented 6Li-doped pulse-shape-sensitive plastic scintillator
• Reactor monitoring and safeguards using antineutrino detectors
• UV Degradation of the Optical Properties of Acrylic for Neutrino and Dark Matter Experiments
• Directional Antineutrino Detection
• Synthesis and processing of lithium-loaded plastic scintillators on the kilogram scale
• Low Energy Neutrino Detection with a Portable Water-based Liquid Scintillator Detector
• iDREAM: industrial Detector of REactor Antineutrinos for Monitoring at Kalinin nuclear power plant
• Nu Tools: Exploring Practical Roles for Neutrinos in Nuclear Energy and Security
• mini-TimeCube as a Neutron Scatter Camera
• Measurements using a prototype array of plastic scintillator bars for reactor based electron anti-neutrino detection
• Evaluation of the response of plastic scintillator bars and measurement of neutron capture time in non-reactor environment for the ISMRAN experiment
• Measurement of cosmic muon-induced neutron background with ISMRAN detector in a non-reactor environment
• A prototype reactor-antineutrino detector based on ${}^6$Li-doped pulse-shaping-discriminating plastic scintillator