SNIF: A Futuristic Neutrino Probe for Undeclared Nuclear Fission Reactors

摘要

Today reactor neutrino experiments are at the cutting edge of fundamentalresearch in particle physics. Understanding the neutrino is far from complete,but thanks to the impressive progress in this field over the last 15 years, afew research groups are seriously considering that neutrinos could be usefulfor society. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) works with itsMember States to promote safe, secure and peaceful nuclear technologies. In acontext of international tension and nuclear renaissance, neutrino detectorscould help IAEA to enforce the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of NuclearWeapons (NPT). In this article we discuss a futuristic neutrino application todetect and localize an undeclared nuclear reactor from across borders. The SNIF(Secret Neutrino Interactions Finder) concept proposes to use a few hundredthousand tons neutrino detectors to unveil clandestine fission reactors. Beyondprevious studies we provide estimates of all known background sources as afunction of the detector's longitude, latitude and depth, and we discuss howthey impact the detectability.