2013/12/06 by Eric Christensen, Christensen, Eric, Patrick Huber +4
Decision Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Graphite, nuclear technology, radiation studies #High Energy Physics - Experiment (hep-ex) #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Nuclear and radioactivity studies #Risk and Safety Analysis #hep-ex #hep-ph #nucl-ex #physics.ins-det
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1312.1959
67 pages, 14 figures, 9 tables, version submitted to journal
openalex publication_date 2013/12/06 · arxiv created 2014/02/13 · arxiv updated 2014/02/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Antineutrinos have been proposed as a means of reactor safeguards for more than 30 years and there has been impressive experimental progress in neutrino detection. 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 less than 0.1-1 GWth can be safeguarded achieving IAEA goals for quantitative sensitivity and timeliness with 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 real-time.