Prospects for long-range reactor monitoring with gadolinium-loaded water-Cherenkov detectors

TL;DR

This paper assesses the potential of gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande water-Cherenkov detectors to remotely monitor nuclear reactor activity at long distances by detecting antineutrinos, demonstrating feasible detection times for reactor cores.

Contribution

It evaluates the sensitivity of a large water-Cherenkov detector with gadolinium to antineutrinos from distant reactors, providing estimates of detection times under realistic conditions.

Findings

Detects antineutrinos from reactors 190 km away with reasonable live times.

Super-Kamiokande can identify flux from two reactors at Takahama in 50 days with 95% confidence.

Detection of a single reactor flux is feasible within approximately 400 days.

Abstract

Antineutrino detectors are practical, non-intrusive tools capable of remotely monitoring the activity of nuclear reactors. Here we explore the sensitivity of the Super-Kamiokande water-Cherenkov detector, following gadolinium loading, to antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor complex at a distance of approximately 190 km. The livetimes required to observe the two currently operating cores in the reactor complex depend on the activity of other reactors in the vicinity, as well as on estimates of detection efficiency and background rates. Under reasonable assumptions, we find that gadolinium-loaded Super-Kamiokande could detect the flux of antineutrinos from both cores at the Takahama reactor complex at 95% confidence level in 50 (10) live days 95% (50%) of the time, or the flux from one core in 397 (73) live days, provided that each core is operating at nominal power.