Conveners
Neutrino applications: Session 1
- Tomi Akindele (LLNL)
Neutrino applications: Session 2
- Yan-Jie Schnellbach (RWTH Aachen University)
The Nu Tools study was developed to explore the potential roles for neutrino within nuclear energy and nuclear security. This effort differs from previous neutrino detector studies as it is focused on the potential utilities and determining if there is a possible use case for neutrino detectors as a monitoring technology. Due to the importance of understanding potential use cases, this effort...
While reactor antineutrino detection has been performed at current commercial and research reactors, their detection at advanced reactors poses new challenges. The NuTools study identified that neutrino detection could play a role in the safeguards of advanced reactors, such as small modular reactors (SMRs). Several SMR concepts focus on the operation of multiple modules, often within the same...
Antineutrino detection systems have potential to safeguard the next generation of nuclear reactors. In theory, these systems can be implemented for status verification, reactor power monitoring, and special nuclear material diversion detection. Previous studies have investigated the applicability of this technology using models and simulations, but are often heavily reliant on various...
Recent advances in large water-Cherenkov detector technology, such as doping water with gadolinium at Super-Kamiokande, highlight the feasibility of detecting antineutrinos from power reactors hundreds of kilometers away.
However, in the context of nuclear non-proliferation, detecting power reactors is generally not considered a challenge using more traditional detection techniques. Of more...
Future advanced reactor designs may use liquid fuel or uncountable numbers of small fuel elements. Such designs will be difficult or impossible to monitor for safeguards via traditional item accountancy techniques. One way to address this issue, being pursued by the U.S. Dept of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy Material Protection Accounting and Control Technologies (MPACT), is to develop...
We are now in an era where the sensitivity and scalability of neutrino detectors allows for more intimate investigation into nuclear reactors at range. The reactors deployed on nuclear submarines have a thermal power output around an order of magnitude lower than that of power reactors, but a scalable detector technology could be deployed on a large commercial ship to detect submarines at a...
