A remote reactor monitoring with plastic scintillation detector

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of plastic scintillator bars for remote reactor monitoring by simulating a segmented detector capable of detecting antineutrinos and analyzing fuel composition changes over a burn cycle.

Contribution

It introduces a novel detector design using plastic scintillator bars with light sharing for antineutrino detection and demonstrates its potential for fuel cycle monitoring.

Findings

Detector can effectively identify antineutrino events.

Statistical analysis can track fuel isotopic composition evolution.

Simulation shows promising sensitivity for fuel monitoring.

Abstract

Conceiving the possibility of using plastic scintillator bars as robust detectors for antineutrino detection for the remote reactor monitoring and nuclear safeguard application we study expected basic performance by Monte Carlo simulation. We present preliminary results for a 1 m3 highly segmented detector made of 100 rectangular scintillation bars forming an array which is sandwiched at both sides by the continuous light guides enabling light sharing between all photo detectors. Light detection efficiency is calculated for several light collection configurations, considering different scintillation block geometries and number of photo-detectors. The photo-detectors signals are forming the specific hit pattern, which is characterizing the impinging particle. The statistical analysis of hit patterns allows effectively select antineutrino events and rejects backgrounds. To evaluate detector sensitivity to fuel isotopic composition evolution during fuel burning cycle we have calculated antineutrino spectra. The statistical analyses of the antineutrino spectra for several dates of fuel burning cycle, folded with 15% FWHM at 1 MeV energy resolution of the detector, prove the possibility of proposed detector to measure fuel composition evolution during fuel cycle.