Cerium Ruthenium Low-Energy Antineutrino Measurements for Safeguarding Military Naval Reactors

Bernadette K. Cogswell (Center for Neutrino Physics, Physics Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA) ; Patrick Huber (Center for Neutrino Physics, Physics Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061, USA)

The recent agreement to transfer nuclear submarine reactors and technology from two nuclear-weapon states to a non-nuclear-weapon state (AUKUS deal) highlights an unsolved problem in international safeguards: how to safeguard naval reactor fuel while it is on board an operational nuclear submarine. Proposals to extend existing safeguards technologies and practices are complicated by the need for civilian international inspectors to gain access to the interior of the submarine and the reactor compartment, which raises national security concerns. In this Letter we show that implementing safeguards on submarine propulsion reactors using a low-energy antineutrino reactor-off method, between submarine patrols, can by-pass the need for onboard access all together. We find that, using inverse beta decay, detectors can achieve a timely and high level of assurance that a submarine’s nuclear core has not been diverted (detector mass of around 100 kg) nor its enrichment level changed (detector mass of around 10 tons).

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Published on:
14 June 2022
Publisher:
APS
Published in:
Physical Review Letters , Volume 128 (2022)
Issue 24
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.241803
arXiv:
2111.04510
Copyrights:
Published by the American Physical Society
Licence:
CC-BY-4.0

Fulltext files: