iDREAM: industrial Detector of REactor Antineutrinos for Monitoring at Kalinin nuclear power plant

TL;DR

The paper presents the design and deployment of iDREAM, a prototype antineutrino detector at Kalinin NPP, demonstrating its potential for remote reactor monitoring and safeguards.

Contribution

It introduces a novel 1-ton liquid scintillator detector system for reactor antineutrino detection and assesses its feasibility for nuclear safeguard applications.

Findings

Successful detection of reactor antineutrinos at 20 m distance

Effective background suppression achieved

Prototype demonstrates potential for remote reactor monitoring

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the description of the iDREAM detector and its systems. iDREAM is a prototype detector designed to demonstrate the feasibility of antineutrino detectors for remote reactor monitoring and safeguard purposes. Antineutrinos are detected with a 1 ton liquid scintillator via inverse beta decay on protons. In order to suppress cosmic muons, gamma and neutron background, the detector is housed in a dedicated shielding. The detector is installed at the Kalinin nuclear power plant (Russia), 20 m from the 3 GW$_{th}$ reactor core.