Reactor as a source of antineutrinos: Thermal fission energy

Abstract

Deeper insight into the features of a reactor as a source of antineutrinos is required for making further advances in studying the fundamental properties of the neutrino. The relationship between the thermal power of a reactor and the rate of the chain fission reaction in its core is analyzed.

Sensitivity toZ-prime and nonstandard neutrino interactions from ultralow threshold neutrino-nucleus coherent scattering

“…Since the thermal output is integrated over the cascaded decay of all sequential daughter products, some of which are relatively long-lived, these rates are likewise mildly dependent upon the reactor fuel evolution, and typical mid-cycle values are tabulated. Also included in Table I are the mean cumulative energy E ν per fission delivered to neutrinos [15], the mean number N ν of neutrinos sharing that energy budget in the decay cascade [16], and typical fission fractions f i /F of the TAMU research reactor (cf. Ref.…”

“…The thermal energy E Th (not counting escaping neutrinos, but incorporating recapture of neutrons not active in down-stream fission events) released per fission (on the order of 200 MeV) for the primary reactor constituents [15] are presented in Table I. Since the thermal output is integrated over the cascaded decay of all sequential daughter products, some of which are relatively long-lived, these rates are likewise mildly dependent upon the reactor fuel evolution, and typical mid-cycle values are tabulated.…”

The $$\nu $$ ν -cleus experiment: a gram-scale fiducial-volume cryogenic detector for the first detection of coherent neutrino–nucleus scattering

“…A standard fuel composition is used for the calculation: 62% of 235 U, 30% of 239 Pu and 8% of 238 U [38] A benchmark reactor with a thermal power of 4 GW, a typical value for a two-core reactor plant, yields ∼1.2 × 10 20 fissions per second and an isotropic neutrino rate of R ν ≈ 7.5 × 10 20 s −1 [37]. The neutrino flux Φ(E ν ) can be calculated as…”

Measurements of the High Dose Rate Profiles Inside a Shutdown CANDU® Reactor

“…The recoverable energy per fission, E rec , was estimated to be 205.9 ± 0.6 MeV, assuming a mid-life burn-up percent fuel composition of 0.4% U-235, 99.4% U-238, 0.2% Pu-239 and 0.006% Pu-241. The average number of neutrons emitted per fission, , was estimated to be 2.83 ± 0.01 [11]. The values of σ for each steel reactor component were obtained from knowledge of the volumes of the steel parts, the neutron flux tallies associated with each steel part, and estimates of the cobalt impurity concentrations in the steel.…”

“…The current was measured as a function of γ-ray dose rate by exposing the detector to a nominally 3.7×10 11 Bq, point-like Co-60 source. The dose rate was varied from 0.2 Gy/hr to 2 Gy/hr by changing the distance between the detector and the Co-60 source.…”