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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung
AGA 2: New Verification Concepts and Forensics
AGA 2.3: Talk
Wednesday, March 22, 2023, 15:45–16:05, HSZ/0004
Anti-neutrino detector concepts for safeguarding spent nuclear fuel repositories — •Yan-Jie Schnellbach1,2, Thomas Radermacher1,2, Irmgard Niemeyer3, Stefan Roth1, and Malte Göttsche2 — 1RWTH Aachen University - Nuclear Verification and Disarmament, Aachen, Germany — 2RWTH Aachen University - Physics Institute III B, Aachen, Germany — 3Forschungszentrum Jülich, Jülich, Germany
Spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is an inevitable by-product of nuclear power generation and requires safeguarding, whether in interim storage or deep geological repositories. Anti-neutrino emissions from the ongoing beta decay of fission fragments could provide a complementary monitoring channel, as anti-neutrinos pass through shielding and geology unhindered and can be detected using inverse beta decay (IBD). This study investigates a novel anti-neutrino detection concept using a liquid organic (LOr) time projection chamber (TPC), combining scalability and particle reconstruction of TPCs with the hydrogen target atoms provided by organic compounds. Geant4-based simulations and electron drift modelling are used to study IBD event reconstruction in a container-sized concept detector for interim storage. The concept detector's expected signal rate, sensitivity and directionality are estimated for a representative example repository with varying deployment scenarios. The results are compared to other state-of-the-art anti-neutrino detection technologies proposed for monitoring. This ongoing comparison study will determine the feasibility anti-neutrino detection as complementary safeguards for SNF repositories.