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AGA: Arbeitsgruppe Physik und Abrüstung

AGA 9: Verification III – Antineutrino Detection

AGA 9.1: Vortrag

Freitag, 14. März 2025, 12:00–12:30, HS HISKP

nuSENTRY: antineutrino monitoring for future advanced reactors — •Yan-Jie Schnellbach — TU Darmstadt

In recent years, renewed interest in nuclear power as low-carbon source of electricity has lead to significant investment and build ambitions in so-called small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactors are smaller versions of current light water-moderated reactor as well as more exotic concepts. The key feature of modularity aims at mass production of reactor units, which potentially imposes new demands on existing non-proliferation and safeguards regimes. Additionally, advanced reactor concepts introduce ideas such as higher enrichment fuel (high-assay low enriched uranium - HALEU) or bulk fuels (pebble fuel, liquid fuel).

Monitoring reactor operations and concepts via their antineutrino emissions has been demonstrated for large conventional nuclear power plants, with several active R&D projects globally. The nuSENTRY project and group is now investigating the transferability of these technologies to future SMR and naval reactor scenarios. Upcoming detector technologies will be studied to determine their feasibility as antineutrino-based reactor safeguards. Finally, in addition to the antineutrino signal, particle signatures, such as neutron flux or cosmic muon information will also be considered as complementary data stream. Previous work on spent fuel safeguards will be presented and planned investigations into advanced reactor monitoring scenarios will be introduced.

Keywords: reactor; non-proliferation; safeguards; antineutrino