Reactor monitoring and safeguards using antineutrino detectors

Abstract

Nuclear reactors have served as the antineutrino source for many fundamental physics experiments. The techniques developed by these experiments make it possible to use these very weakly interacting particles for a practical purpose. The large flux of antineutrinos that leaves a reactor carries information about two quantities of interest for safeguards: the reactor power and fissile inventory. Measurements made with antineutrino detectors could therefore offer an alternative means for verifying the power history and fissile inventory of a reactors, as part of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other reactor safeguards regimes. Several efforts to develop this monitoring technique are underway across the globe.