Nuclear detection Remotely monitoring nuclear reactorsRemotely monitoring nuclear reactors
A new U.S. Department of Energy project to develop the first detector able to remotely monitor nuclear reactors will also help physicists test the next generation of neutrino observatories. Nuclear reactions produce telltale antineutrinos – the antimatter counterpart of neutrinos. The new detectors will be designed to measure the energy of such antineutrinos and the direction from which they come, allowing monitoring of reactors from a distance of 25 kilometers to verify nonproliferation agreements.
A new U.S. Department of Energy project to develop the first detector able to remotely monitor nuclear reactors will also help physicists test the next generation of neutrino observatories.
Nuclear reactions produce telltale antineutrinos – the antimatter counterpart of neutrinos. The new detectors will be designed to measure the energy of such antineutrinos and the direction from which they come, allowing monitoring of reactors from a distance of 25 kilometers to verify nonproliferation agreements. This project will lay the groundwork for larger detectors capable of monitoring reactor operations from a distance of several hundred kilometers, helping nations track or restrict the production of fissile materials that can be used in nuclear weapons.
But physicists are also interested in detecting neutrinos and antineutrinos to discover the basic laws of the universe, in particular to learn why the universe today is composed mostly of normal matter with very little antimatter, when both should have been made in equal amounts during the Big Bang.
“These neutrino observations have very broad-ranging implications; they could help us explain how we came to exist,” said Gabriel Orebi Gann, an assistant professor of physics and faculty scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who is the UC Berkeley principal investigator for the new detector.
The initial project is called Watchman, for WATer CHerenkov Monitor of ANtineutrinos, and will be built by a large collaboration between researchers in the United States and United Kingdom, led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. UC Berkeley and the Berkeley Lab are members of the collaboration, dubbed the Advanced Instrumentation Testbed, or AIT, which is funded by the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration.
Berkeley says that subject to final approval by mine authorities, Watchman will be constructed at the site of the Boulby Underground Laboratory, an existing United Kingdom government-funded deep underground science facility operating in a working potash, polyhalite and salt mine (Boulby Mine) located on the northeast coast of England. By its projected operational start in 2023, it will consist of 3,500 tons of liquid, mostly water mixed with the element gadolinium, that will be tuned to detect interactions of antineutrinos emitted from a nuclear reactor at the Hartlepool complex 25 kilometers away.
