Antineutrino Reactor Safeguards: A Case Study of the DPRK 1994 Nuclear Crisis

Abstract

Antineutrinos have been proposed as a means to safeguard nuclear reactors for more than 30 years and there has been impressive experimental progress in antineutrino detection that makes this method increasingly practical for use by the International Atomic Energy Agency. In this paper we conduct, for the first time, a case study of the application of antineutrino safeguards to a real-world scenario -the North Korean nuclear crisis in 1994. We derive detection limits to a partial or full core discharge in 1989 based on actual IAEA safeguards access and find that two independent methods would have yielded positive evidence for a second core with very high confidence. To generalize our results, we provide detailed estimates for the sensitivity to the plutonium content of various types of reactors, including most types of plutonium production reactors, based on detailed reactor simulations. A key finding of this study is that a wide class of reactors with a thermal power of 0.1-1 GW th can be safeguarded achieving IAEA goals for quantitative sensitivity and timeliness with antineutrino detectors right outside the reactor building. This type of safeguards does not rely on the continuity of knowledge and provides information about core inventory and power status in realtime.

Evolution of the Reactor Antineutrino Flux and Spectrum at Daya Bay

“…This result generally demonstrates the validity of recent theoretical studies describing antineutrino-based monitoring of reactor fissile content [29,30] The data suggest slightly better agreement in ðdS j =dF 239 Þ with the Huber-Mueller model above 4 MeV prompt energy than below, emphasizing the possibility of disagreements in the evolution of both the flux and the spectrum. Increased statistics are required in order to investigate the possible isotopic origin of the excess in the observed antineutrino flux from 4-6 MeV prompt energy [1,6,7], a topic discussed recently in the literature [10,28,[31][32][33].…”

Getting to the Bottom of an Antineutrino Anomaly

“…This result generally demonstrates the validity of recent theoretical studies describing antineutrino-based monitoring of reactor fissile content [29,30] The data suggest slightly better agreement in ðdS j =dF 239 Þ with the Huber-Mueller model above 4 MeV prompt energy than below, emphasizing the possibility of disagreements in the evolution of both the flux and the spectrum. Increased statistics are required in order to investigate the possible isotopic origin of the excess in the observed antineutrino flux from 4-6 MeV prompt energy [1,6,7], a topic discussed recently in the literature [10,28,[31][32][33].…”

Detection of Breeding Blankets Using Antineutrinos

“…8 For a review of work in the area of antineutrino detection and safeguards, see for example A. Bernstein et al 9 Also, more recent theoretical investigations have focused on studying the applications of antineutrino detectors to the study of MOX fuels 10 and converted light water reactors (LWRs) 11 (such as might be used for the disposition of excess U.S. weapons plutonium), the situation in Iran, 12 and a hypothetical scenario involving antineutrino detectors and the North Korean crisis of 1994. 13 Unfortunately, for the purposes of monitoring a breeding blanket, much of the existing antineutrino detector technology cannot be used due to a confounding physics problem: the CAN signal energy is below the detection threshold for the existing technology. The technologies that have been used all rely on detecting antineutrinos using inverse beta decay (IBD), which is neutrino capture on a free proton,ν…”